ADKOS Episode One: Baby's First Birthday
by anime fearie
Summary: Sequel to A Different Kind Of Superhero. Yes, that loveable little furball is back along with Reeve and the Turks. Cait is now a whole year old and is about to meet with a few old friends he never realised he even had in a lifetime long past.
1. Default Chapter

**A Different Kind Of Superhero;**

Episode I

Baby's First Birthday

_By AF_

**Part One.**

_*_

_"Ever feel like you're being watched?" _

_~ Cait Sith._

_*_

Cait sat on the table with his head held high and as much dignity as he could muster.  It wasn't working though.  He still felt like an idiot in a pretty pink ribbon.  Literally.  Upon the arrival of the guests, one of them decided that the birthday boy didn't look festive enough for the occasion and had promptly taken a pink ribbon from the wrapping of one of the gifts and tied it neatly around his neck.

            _She should have made a noose out of it instead._

            It was only unfortunate that because of her status as Reeve's girlfriend, she was a no go for verbal abuse.  Instead he had to direct such abuse at Reno who had constantly sniggered from the moment the ribbon had touched Cait's neck.  It helped, telling Reno off, but it wasn't the same when the person you were abusing wasn't at all upset by anything Cait said.

            Elena passed the table Cait was sitting on a went to offer him a pat. Tired of being treated like a pet, Cait ducked the pat and flattened his ears on his head.

            "Touch me again wench," he growled, "and you'll be picking a pink silk ribbon out of your right nostril for the next few weeks."

            "Cait!" Reeve berated from halfway across the yard, "Watch your mouth."

            Of course he had expected the retort, and he was truly sorry for upsetting Reeve, but this had gone on long enough. It was /his/ birthday after all, and he had never gotten in trouble for swearing on any other occasion. In fact his last sentence had been rather tame in comparison to what he was capable of.

            "Why?"

            It was then that Reeve pointed to the girl sitting at the table beside Cait, her big brown eyes wide and focused on Cait.

            Cait winced and looked at Kasey.  "Pretend I didn't say that."

Since Reeve had informed Cait a couple of weeks ago that it had almost been a year since Cait said his first individual free thinking word, he had immediately dubbed the upcoming anniversary 'Cait's Birthday.'  And since it was his birthday, he deserved a birthday party.  Cait had immediately fallen in love with the idea of this special day and had asked what was involved.  

"Well," Reeve had answered, "You get a cake, guests come over, and of course you get presents. And naturally your age increases by a year."

"How old does that make me then?" Cait had asked curiously.

"Technically  probably only a few years younger than Reno. But that was another model of course, the first one being lost at the Temple of the Ancients.  Your current body is probably a few years old. But you and what makes you you, will be one years old in a couple of weeks."

Cait wasn't much impressed with the idea of the cake.  He sure couldn't eat any of it.  The last two factors intrigued him though.  Sure Reeve gave him lots of presents anyway, but most of it was purely upgrades for his artificial body.  The concept of receiving things that were meant only for his own personal enjoyment was definitely something he had looked forward to.

The next point was inviting guests.  All in all, the only real friends that Cait had were the Turks and he had assumed that they would be coming anyway.  He knew Reeve's friend's in Icicle Village of course and he supposed he could invite them.  But the only friend of his own in the Village was an eight year old girl by the name of Kasey.  Reeve had allowed Cait to ask Kasey to come only after she got expressed permission off her parents and that Cait had to walk her home before dark. Pleased at the idea of having his very own friend coming along, Cait had readily agreed.

They had set up a few tables borrowed off various neighbors of Reeve's and put them in a cleared space out the back of Reeve's house.  Streamers of different colors were tied up across the yard from the eaves of Reeve's house to the trees around them. A barbeque had been borrowed from the Inn and set up over in the far corner of the clearing.  

Reno was currently manning it in a slightly tipsy state.  Not the greatest idea.  He burnt most of the food and had managed to set the grill on fire at least twice during the course of the day.  But he was adamant to stay put.  He had even bought his own cook's apron emblazoned with the message, "Kiss me or I'll shoot you." A joke that Reeve had explained was taken from another famous quote written on most normal, comical cook's apron's. Still it was better, and much more 'G' rated than the white t-shirt he had on underneath that proclaimed rather proudly; "No that's not a gun in my pocket." Despite Reeve's want to not draw attention to the fact that his friends were Turks (not to mention crude) Reeve had insisted that Reno keep the apron on at least till most of his neighbors had left.

Elena had spent most of the day clinging to Reeve's arm playing the diligent girlfriend and mingling.  She wore a smile, but all that knew her could tell she was doing this purely for Reeve's benefit and no doubt would rather be off scaling ropes and shooting at enemies.  Or at the very least clinging to him rather differently in a more secluded area.

Rude on the other hand was warming a seat at Cait's present table and had been there for the bulk of the day.  He sat there quietly drinking from the conveniently placed cooler beside him and ignoring the admiring looks he and his sleeveless black t-shirt were receiving off various oppressed housewives and teenage daughters.  Instead he had actually managed to cultivate an interesting relationship with Reeve's workmate Cray.  Both men seemed content at their table with their alcohol supply and occasional conversation which usually consisted of a nod and grunt.

Cait had only decided to come and sit with the two wholly boring men when needing some time to sulk about his new pink accessory.  Before he had been quite happy to mingle with all the new and known alike.  Showing himself off, getting more presents and generally being the center of attention.  

While snow still lay over most of the yard and surrounding area, the day was not unpleasant being so near Spring.  Warm sun lit the grounds and broke up the gray clouds overhead. The air was pleasant with only a few traces of the waning winter chill.  As such at least half of the Village seemed to have passed through the yard at one point or another during the day, invitation or not. The other half (the half that still believed that Reeve was some insane scientist bent on taking over the world) peeked out from behind drawn curtains, scowling at those who would be a part of such evil doings.

Cait was no longer bothered by such rumors anymore.  He had been wandering in and around the town freely for the better part of a year.  Most people seemed comfortable with him by now, and thoroughly sure that Cait was not some scientifically created monster bought forth to eat their children.  He was a cute little novelty that wandered around while Reeve was at work with a toothy grin and polite (most of the time) greeting to any that crossed his path. Often off on errands for Reeve, or exploring just for the sake of it.  He even had a few people around town that often tried to feed him pieces of steak or the like whenever he passed by their houses.  Of course he politely took the proffered items, but he usually spat it out around the corner or took it home to Reeve.

Most cats left their owners dead mice or birds at their doors. A kind of a cat nice, 'look what I did, aren't I clever?' gesture.  Reeve must have been to only one in town that woke up to find pieces of raw prime beef steaks studded with licorice on his doorstop. 

"Did you like your present Cait?" Kasey asked covering up the awkward moment.

Cait looked down at the small yellow blanket he was sitting on.  His present from Kasey.  Pale yellow, it felt as soft as the fine fur on his ears and had pictures of little lambs eating grass printed on it.  Not Cait's taste in style, but it was very comfortable and he could tell that Kasey thought a lot of the gift.  So far  today he had discarded his usual little cape and had tied the blanket around his neck in the same fashion. It was small enough not to quite touch the ground and had caused Kasey to giggle when he had first put it on.

"Soft." He answered appreciatively. "I'll put it up where I sleep."

He got up and wandered over to Rude. "And when I'm not using it to sleep on, it would make a perfect thing to buff Rude's head with."

He demonstrated this by picking up the tail of the blanket and reaching up to rub Rude's bald head with it.

"Oooooo shiny." Cait said.

Kasey giggled again. Rude took another sip of his beer and made a good show of ignoring the black and white cat currently buffing his head with a blanket covered in fluffy white lambs.

Cray grinned and grunted in amusement.

It wasn't long before Cait had to full-fill his promise and walk Kasey home.  He made short work of it though, wanting to get back to the party and therefore back to somebody with the dexterity needed to untie the pink bow from around his neck.

When he wandered back into the yard he was distressed to find that the amount of party-goers had halved.  Soft dusk light showed through the trees lighting the area with an orange hue.  It didn't bother Cait, he could see in the dark.  But he did see Reeve and Reno setting up a string of Chinese lanterns between the trees to add a bit more light to the scene.  Cait was glad.  He had thought that the party might stop when darkness fell.

With an evil smile, Cait went over to help.  

Cara was standing beside the men as the struggled with the complex task of knots and power usage, offering helpful hints and avoiding Reno's often straying hands.

Cait wasn't much interested in the ones that hadn't been strung up and was making for one of the trees that /did/ have a string of the lanterns hanging from one of it's branches. He had only managed to hook one claw into the tree before Reeve spotted him.

"Cait no."

It irritated Cait to no end when Reeve could guess whatever it was he was about to do, therefore spoiling his fun.

"But Reeve I…"

"No you weren't." Reeve interrupted.  "You aren't allowed to tightrope walk the lantern string."

Cait relaxed his claw and stepped away from the tree. "I wasn't." Cait argued.  

"No swinging from them either. You'll electrocute yourself." Reeve told him sternly.

Cait puffed out his cheeks and gave Reeve a sour look. 

"Don't give me that." Reeve admonished with a guilty look.  

"You can play with something dangerous later." Reno cut in looking up from his work. "When Reeve's drunk."

"Reno!"

Appeased by the compromise, Cait wandered up to Reno and clung to the Turk's right leg with both arms.  "Thank you, wise and considerate Leader of the Turks.  Now if I may ask another favor…."

Realizing that movement was going to be next to impossible while Cait still wanted something, Reno sighed.  Reaching down he loosened the pink bow from around Cait's neck and handed the offensive bow back to its owner.

Cait took the proffered ribbon and ran off in search of new things,  a determined look on his face. Reno watched as Cait disappeared into the house, only to reappear a few seconds later looking much happier, minus the ribbon.

"He probably set fire to it." Reeve muttered from beside him.

"Mmm."  Reno mumbled unconvinced.

*

Cait had been sitting on his table for the past hour or so watching.  Most guests had left by now.  There were only probably ten people milling about the backyard now in various states of drunkenness.  Actually most had taken to dancing.  Cait had never witnessed anything like it.

"So graceful and fluid." Cait murmured, mesmerized to the two other people at the table.  Both grunted in response.

"I mean how can two people move in such fluid motion together without choreography? Or weapons" He added as an afterthought.

"You'd be surprised." Rude commented, the ghost of a smile on his face.

Cait turned and gave Rude 'the look'. Cait had been perfecting that look over the past year.  Basically it meant that he was fully aware of what was being said and he didn't approve of the notion that someone might think that he didn't. People seemed to forget sometimes that the worldly 'Reno skills' part of him actually knew a fair bit concerning people's behavior. He knew what Rude meant, even if he didn't have the practical experience to go with it.

"Guess that's why dancing is so popular." Cait said, returning to his musings.  "It's the closest you can get to sex in a public area."

Cray spat out the mouthful of beer he'd had in his mouth.  For a moment Cait thought it was something he'd said. And in a way it had been.  The comment had come at the precise time he'd seen just who his daughter was currently dancing with.

Cait really couldn't blame the guy's response.  Even if he hadn't known what Reno was like, he would've gotten a pretty good idea just what was on the Turk's mind just watching the pair dancing in a dimly lit corner of the backyard.  Just watching them Cait felt sure he couldn't have picked out a better couple to prove his last point.

Cray got up stiffly from the table and began to stalk over the pair.

"Hope Reno's got his vest on." Rude said casually.

Cait though, had already moved onto other thoughts.  "Do you think I'm too short to dance Rude?"

"Yes." He answered promptly.

Cait went on regardless, "I mean, not that I want to dance like what I was saying before. I mean obviously, but it kinda looks like fun." Cait thought for a few moments before Rude's answer finally sunk it.  "What do you mean 'yes'?"

"You're two feet tall. You're about as tall as most people's knees."

Again, Cait gave him 'the look.'  "We'll see. Not everybody can be an overgrown freak you know."

Their conversation was interrupted by a breathless Reno sliding into one of the vacant chairs. He looked over his shoulder for a few moments before finally settling down into the seat and taking a swig from Rude's beer bottle.

"Geez, I thought that guy was gonna take my head off or something."

"If you were any closer to the girl you would have been inside her." Cait pointed out. "Of course her father is pissed." Cait brightened a little, "Do you think Elena would dance with me?"

"Sure." Reno responded.  "So long as she was dancing on her knees. And personally I think there are far better ways of asking a woman to dance with you than going up to her and saying, 'get on your knees girl, an' I'll show you how to /really/ dance.' Especially to a woman that is most probably armed."

"Good point." Cait conceded. But he was still interested in trying it out.  The only person tall enough to dance with him properly had  probably been put in bed by now and the only other girl he felt comfortable embarrassing himself in front of was Elena.

He spotted her and Reeve dancing over by a group of tables near the center of the yard.  He had to wince.  Reeve really couldn't dance for shit.  He just hoped that Reno considered dancing a skill more so than Reeve. Otherwise he really /would/ end up looking like a dick.

He stuck his tongue out at Rude and jumped off the table. "Watch this."

Cait wandered over to Reeve and Elena and pretended to clear his throat.  Really a silly thing for Cait to do. After all, it sounded fake when most /people/ did it let alone a robotic cat that really had no throat to speak of. At least not in the usual, living standards. However, itt didn't matter how rude or fake sounding the attempt was.  They were too wrapped up in each other to really notice.

Softly, Cait kicked Reeve's leg instead.

"Something wrong Cait?" Reeve asked him a little confused.  "Are you okay?"

"I've come to steal your girlfriend." Cait told him quite seriously.  He turned away from Reeve, backed up a few steps and performed a deep sweeping bow toward Elena.  Without straightening properly, he turned his head up to face her and held out a single paw.  "Would you do me the honor of this dance?"

Elena looked at him with a small amount of amusement.  "What happened to stuffing a certain ribbon up my nose?"

"I'm getting over it." He shifted slightly in his position. "I'm getting a cramp actually."

"Cait…" Reeve began in that parental tone that Cait had grown so used to lately.

"Unless you're drunk enough to let me go swing off the lanterns you'll let me dance." Cait told him tersely.

Elena laughed at Reeve's expression and took Cait's proffered paw. "Lead the way."

Cait dragged Elena over to the nearby tables and jumped up.  From this position, (though now with limited movement) he came practically up to Elena's chin giving him the required height he would need to dance with her properly.

Reeve slid into a seat at Rude and Reno's table and leaned forward on his elbows.  His face was flushed red with dancing and alcohol and despite just having his girlfriend leave him to dance with a 2ft tall robotic cat, he was having a good time.

"Look," Reno said to Rude between stifled giggles, "El's table dancing."

Rude smiled slightly and Reeve cracked up.  Even though it had been a bad joke.

"The more you drink the worse your wit gets." Reeve informed him.

"Yeah but when you're pissed out you'll laugh at things easier than when sober correct? There is no need for good wit."

Reeve settled down and moved his head fractionally to look at Reno.  "Do you mind if Cait stays over at the Inn with you tonight?"  Now Reeve's face colored a little more for reasons that had nothing to do with alcohol.  "It's just that…"

"I did have plans of my own tonight. But s'ok, so long as he doesn't need a babysitter or anything. I wasn't planning of staying in my Inn room tonight is all."

"No he doesn't need to be watched constantly or anything." Reeve reassured.  "What were you planning for tonight?"

Reno took another swig of Rude beer.  The other Turk, seeing this, snatched the bottle away with a grim look. Reno made a face at him and continued.  "The less you know the better. Don't worry," he continued seeing Reeve's face, "Nothing illegal. Trust me."

"Who was it that sad; _Never trust a man who says 'trust me', _?" Reeve asked a little too intoxicated to care what Reno had in store for tonight.  His mind was already preoccupied with thoughts of what /he/ now had planned for tonight.

"Just about everyone with a single working brain cell."  Rude commented.

"You told Cait?" Reno asked pointedly.

Reeve shook his head.  "I feel bad enough for kicking him out in the first place. It is his birthday after all.  I just figured that he likes spending time with you as much if not more, than spending time with me."

"You're gonna tell him just before he has to go." Reno guessed correctly.

"Yeah." Reeve admitted guiltily. 

*

The music, being pumped out through Reno's semi-portable CD player, changed tempo slightly as it kicked into the next song. Something a little faster than had been going before.  Most guests, tired, drunk or both seemed to think this was a little too much for them and headed for home after saying their goodbyes.  

Cait and Elena were still dancing over at the table across the yard.  Reno got up as soon as the song started and ambled over to the duo with ideas of stealing Elena off Cait for a dance.  Cait didn't seem to mind. He had seemed too caught up in his own dancing to worry much about Elena.  Reno and Elena promptly began caving up the backyard with their own idea of dancing that consisted of formal dance steps to up beat rock music.

"What /are/ they doing?" Reeve asked bewildered.

"Formal function they infiltrated a while back. Very formal. They had to learn a few steps. Least I think that's what they're trying to do." Rude answered reaching for another beer.

At last, the cooler appeared empty and Rude scowled slightly at the offense object as if it were responsible.

Reeve watched the dancing pair for a moment longer before decided that it actually did look good.

By the end of the song, the last of the guests had left.

*

"Time for presents!" Cait announced hopping back up onto the table.  

Reno and Elena took seats, still breathing hard from dancing. Rude was content now that he'd managed to find more beer for his cooler.  Reeve was…slumped over on the table top.

Cait wander over and lifted his head up.  "Reeve! I said I was gonna open my presents now."

Reeve nodded. He hadn't really been asleep. Just a little too tipsy.

Cait sat down in the middle of the table and reached for the first big box he could get his paws on.

"The Thornton's." Cait read off from the tag.  Cait didn't know who the Thornton's were, but they sure gave big presents.  He tore the paper off the big box that reached almost to his waist. Then he opened the box and leaned inside. The box was deep enough that Cait's feet came off the ground so much that he looked as if he might fall in.

"Wow!" came the muffled response.  Cait dragged the present out to show his friends.  It was a cat basket.  Larger than most it was probably built to accommodate a small dog, and had soft padding.

Hoping all his presents were going to be as interesting and exciting, Cait tore into the rest of them with gusto.  When he was done, he was the proud owner of three new blankets, two pillows, a watch with a built in compass, three stuffed chocobos of varying colors, a small kiddy book bag with a picture of a comic looking cow head on it, a few blank books and pens, a few knitted jumpers and ten pounds of ground steak.

Reno screwed up his nose. "Eww, has that been sitting out here all day?"

Cait took a tentative sniff then shrugged and threw the package over his shoulder. "Pity, we could have used it for the barbeque."

"You haven't opened /our/ presents yet." Elena told him handing over yet another present.

Cait grinned and hastily took the proffered gift. It a few short moments he had it unwrapped. "A book?" He asked dubiously.

"A very special book." Elena corrected. "Open it."

Cait sat down properly and flipped open the cover. "The personal journal of Tseng, Leader of the Shin-Ra Turks."  Cait looked at the page blankly for a few moments before re-reading it. "Who's that then?" He asked totally missing the importance.

Reno frowned at Cait.  "He was our boss at Shinra."

"He died a couple of years ago." Elena added quietly.

"We've added a few things at the back too." Reeve went on trying to dispel a little of the gloomy mood around the table.  "Things that might prove interesting from before. You always wanted to know about Shinra and Sephiroth, now you'll know from someone who was there first hand for most of it."

"This book is very important to you." Cait guessed looking around at the dull faces.  "Thank you for trusting me with it."

"You deserve it." Was the comment that surprisingly came from Rude.

Cait hugged them each in turn. All except for Reeve.

"Where's my hug?" He complained.

"That book wasn't from you, you wrote in it, but it wasn't yours." Cait pointed out.  

Reeve grinned and handed over a wrapped cylindrical object he'd been hiding underneath the table. 

Cait carefully unwrapped the gift to find it was…his staff.

"Didn't you already give me this?"

"Notice anything different? " 

Cait inspected his weapon for a while. "New materia?"

Reeve nodded excitedly.  "I've finally fixed the slots as well.  You can still use it like you did before, only now, if you keep the switch depressed for longer the slots will spin.  The new materia in it is Earth, Time and Gravity. Theoretically, and according to Gast's hypothesis, with the new materia and another few things I added inside the staff,  it should be able to transport you different places in a very short time frame."

Reeve looked impressed with himself, but the others just looked at him blankly. "You may be able to pop anywhere around the world in seconds." He explained.  "Gast was a little vague about it but where you want to go has something to do with will. We won't know till I run more tests."

/Now/ they looked impressed.

"Cool!" Cait exclaimed.  He seemed all set to give it a try before Reeve quickly reached out and plucked the weapon from Cait's paws.  

"Not yet. Like I said I haven't tested it yet."

"But you just gave it to me." Cait protested. 

"I know. I wanted to have it completely ready for today, but I couldn't. Sorry Cait, but you'll have to wait a while before testing it out."

Cait picked up a stuffed chocobo and plonked down onto the table again holding the blue bird up to his chest. "I'm not a little kid Reeve, I can take care of myself."

All four looked Cait for a few moments in silence taking in the scene. 

They all looked very doubtful of that last statement.

*

Cait took the news of his having to stay with Reno rather well  when Reeve told him.  When Reeve had told him Cait had replied with a quick; "I expected as much. S'ok, I like staying with Reno."

And that had been that.  He disappeared into the house for a little while only to remerge with his new book bag packed with goodies such as Kasey's blanket, his little blue chocobo, a blank book, a few pens and the journal.  He wore his watch.  He looked as happy as a kid going camping with a big cheesy grin and his book bag slung across his chest, hanging down behind him so it hit the back of his legs with every slight movement.

Soon after, Reno, Rude and Cait left the backyard for the Inn.  Reeve and Elena were left with the mess.  

"Maybe I should take to everything with a hose." Reeve mused as he tried to clear one of the tables of assorted beer cans and food remnants.

Elena was doing a similar thing with one of the other tables.  "Good idea.  I'm not sure if I'm up for the big clean-up stuff tonight."

Reeve cast a sheepish look over his shoulder at her, "Tired?"

Elena turned her back to him and pretended to busy herself with the task of cleaning, mainly to hide the smile on her face.  "A little. Gods, I think I could pass out right here."

"It has been a long day." He agreed trying not to sound at all disappointed. It didn't work, she could still hear it in his voice.

"Very long." She echoed intent on drawing out the torture longer. 

"Yeah." Dejectedly. 

It came to the point where if the charade went on any longer, she wouldn't be able to control herself and would begin laughing. So she decided to quit it.  Turning back around she crossed to the table with the where the remains of the cake sat and perched herself on the table next to it.  She cut herself a slice and settled in to watch Reeve work for a while.  It lasted about twenty minutes before Reeve noticed that Elena had stopped. He looked up from where he was picking up beer cans from around the barbeque and frowned at her.

"Leaving me to do all the hard work?"

She smiled. "Absolutely.  Besides, I didn't get to eat all night."

"I'm sure cake isn't the most nutritious dinner you could have. If you want, I'll cook you some real food if you'd like."

"I want cake." She stated simply. Very deliberately she scooped up some icing from the top with a forefinger then stuck the finger in her mouth.

Reeve chuckled slightly and shook his head. "Tease.' He accused. 

She pulled the now clean finger from her mouth and gave him an innocent look. "Me?" Then she gave him a slow smile and scooped up another bit of icing. "Want some?"

He didn't have to think about that for very long. Leaving the garbage bag by the grill, he crossed the yard and stopped in front of her. With her other hand, she pulled him in to stand in between her knees and offered him the icing. With a silly smile he accepted the offer. Her finger clean again, she reached for more but he stopped her and took cake off her, putting it to one side and drew her in closer till their lips met. After a few moments he broke away from her lips to begin trailing light kisses down her throat.

"Perhaps we should move elsewhere, I'm feeling a little exposed here."

He stopped what he was doing and grinned up at her.  "You started it." He reminded in a mocking tone.

"Yeah and I'm not going to finish it out here in the open thank you."

He sighed melodramatically, reached down to securely grab her legs and hoisted her off the table.

She made a surprised little 'ah' sound and quickly put her arms around his neck to save herself from falling. He struggled slightly under her weight.

"Arr, you're heavier than I thought."

She swatted the back of his head.  "Bastard."

The grin was back and he stopped pretending to struggle. Instead he kissed her and began walking toward his back door.  He did an admirable job of navigation, being slightly tipsy and otherwise occupied. He pushed the door open by backing into it and preceded to carry her across the room to the bed. Easing her backward, he followed her down, not once breaking their lips apart. As he leant over her, still partially standing, her hands worked on his shirt buttons.  Finally it fell to the floor behind them and her hands dropped down to his belt buckle. Finally they broke away from each other, breathing hard.  

It was then that something caught Reeve's attention. Out of the corner of his eye he saw something dangling at the head of the bed.  With one hand he stilled her hands, with the other he reached over her head and snagged the pretty pink ribbon from its place tied to the headboard.  Studying the ribbon for a few seconds, Reeve's face suddenly went a little red, his head swiveling around the room till it came to rest solidly on the glowing eyes of Cait's mog sitting innocently in the corner.

Confused at having their moment interrupted, Elena snatched the ribbon out of Reeve's hand. Written on the ribbon in a childish scrawl were the words; "Ever feel like you're being watched?"

Elena's eyes went wide as Reeve got to his feet and crossed the lab toward the Mog.

*

At the Inn Reno let another piece of popcorn be fed into his mouth from the clawed hand that offered it.  Cait absently reached into the bucket beside him for another piece, again offering it up to the man whose lap he was sitting in, not bothering to remove his eyes from the image of Reeve stalking toward the hidden camera in his Mog. A very small transmission dish sat on top of the television. An evilly amused expression nestled on the cat's little face.

"Think we got found out." Cait mumbled, reaching into the bucket for another piece of popcorn.

Reno smirked and let Cait feed him yet another piece of the popcorn. "I think you got them back effectively enough though."

They watched Reeve give a twisted smile at the camera, his arm darting up and out of screen before the view completely shut off.

Cait shrugged and offered Reno another piece. "Pink isn't my color for one. And I'm spending my birthday night in an Inn not two minutes walk from my own house."

"No more popcorn Cait. I stayed for the joke, but I haveta go."

Reno moved Cait off his lap and stood, heading for the door. 

"Do you really have to?" Cait asked plaintively.

"No. I don't /have/ to. But I explained this to you. Would you deny me this chance?"

"I guess not." Cait answered. "I guess it'll give me a chance to read some of the journal."

"Okay," Reno responded opening the door. "Just remember what Reeve told you. Not to stay active all night or you won't have any power for the morning."

With that Reno stepped out through the door, closing it behind himself.  Cait sighed and reached down onto the floor by the bed and snagged the journal out of his bag. As he pulled it up onto the bed, a few photos fell out of the back, spilling onto the bed. Curiously Cait picked them up and started sorting through them. The first one was a picture of five people. Three he recognized as Reeve, Reno and Rude. The other two were people he'd never seen before.  The writing on the back of the picture told him they were Tseng, and Rufus Shinra.  From the color of the suit the one with the dark hair was wearing, he assumed that was Tseng. Leader of the Shinra Turks before all that bad stuff had started to happen.  The photo looked a few years old and looked as though it had been taken at some sort of function.  They all held drinks up to the camera and wore goofy smiles. Well all except Rude and Tseng.  Cait spent a few long moments studying the latter. The serious eyes, the faint amusement on his lips as he posed with his friends.

"Hope you know your history." Cait told the photo, ';cause you've just become my history teacher."

Stuffing the rest of the photos back into the back of the book, Cait flipped open to the first page and settled in for some long reading.

*****************

_Notes: Well, was that a good beginning for the new start to the ADKOS series? I hope so. I had a lot to get through in this first bit and it took me a bit of time, but I think I managed.  'Sides I wanted to /really/ get into things in the next part. And yes, you might have guessed it, I'm going to make Reno's shirts a re-appearing thing in every episode. I can't help myself, teehee. Neway, look out for the next chapter, it's gonna be fuuuuuuunnnnnnnnn!!!!!!!!!!!!_

_AF_

_anime_fearie@excite.com_

_All stories can be found on the 70th Floor at Neo Midgar_

_http://www.geocities.com/anime_fearie/_

_Home of lazy ass-lickers anonymous._


	2. Part II

**A Different Kind Of Superhero – **

Episode I

**Baby's First Birthday**

_By AF_

**Part II**

*****

_"Aren't you dead?"_

_- Cait Sith._

*

            Reeve yawned and rolled over, attempting to get back to sleep.  He wasn't sure what had awoken him, but he was determined not to let it bother him too much.  Whatever it was, if it wasn't going to kill him within the next few minutes, he didn't care.

            The act of turning over bought his body up against something warm and soft.  Without opening his eyes he wrapped his arms around the warm soft thing and pulled himself closer to it.  The warm thing sighed contented and leaned into the embrace.

            "Morning." He heard Elena's sleepy voice.

            He was pressed up against her back, smooth, warm and bare against his chest.

            "Mmmm." He mumbled pressing a soft kiss to the back of her bare neck just under the hairline. 

            Elena replied with her own "Mmmm." And turned in his arms to lay on her back. "A nice way to wake up." She smiled pulling his closer till their lips touched.

            It was at this point that Reeve gave up on any attempts at sleep.  For one thing he was more awake now than if he'd swallowed an entire cup of coffee in five seconds. For another thing, sleep now just didn't seem quite as tempting. Not as tempting as what was happening now at any rate.  A good morning kiss that now had him more wired than he'd been last night.

            He did manage to restrain himself enough to pull away from the kiss though.  Even though he was practically on top of her now.

            "I've missed waking up like this." He told her stroking the short blond hair by her ear with his thumb.

            "Me too." She admitted.  "Still, I don't suppose it would be as special if it happened all the time." She added thoughtfully.

            "Oh I don't know.  I could get used to it."

            He kissed her again before she had a chance to answer.  

            All too soon though, they were interrupted.

            By a shout.

            Startled by the loud angry voice that echoed through the village, both pulled away from each other and turned their eyes toward the window.  The window set into the front of the house provided Reeve with a nice view of the Inn and a few neighboring houses.  Nothing happening in the town was of any interest to Reeve though.  Instead he was staring open-mouthed at the pale figure sprinting full tilt through the center of town and toward the tree line.  A man no doubt. A naked man.  A man clutching blue and white clothing. A man with shoulder length bright red hair that streamed out behind him, unbound. 

            Reeve cast a silent but very confused look at Elena but was forced to bring his eyes back to the window after another angry shout flew toward the fleeing Turk.

            "Come back here you bastard! I'll kill you for going near my daughter.!!!"

            "That was Cray." Reeve stated unnecessarily.  He rolled out of bed and got to his feet grabbing a pair of jeans.  "Bloody hell Reno. What have you done?"

            Elena propped herself up onto her elbows and watched him dress.  "Think he'll really try to kill him?"  She asked casually. She obviously didn't think it was likely.

            But Reeve didn't have much of a chance to answer.  Not when he heard the loud booming gunshot ring out and see Reno's valiant dive for the safety of the trees.

            "Fuck!" Reeve swore now very hastily putting on his shoes and heading for the door.  Elena wasn't far behind him, out of bed like a shot and dressing as fast as possible.  Reeve had had a head start though and ran out of the door, not bothering to wait for her. He made it outside just in time to see Cray enter the woods where Reno had disappeared moments before, plaid dressing gown flowing out behind him, still in slippers and pajamas, a double barreled shotgun at the ready in his hands.

            Reeve sprinted after them. Although Cray had a marvelous head-start on him and was probably the fitter of the two, (not to mention the insane blood lust coursing through his veins) Reeve managed to catch up to him about five minutes later.

            "Cray!"

            Cray had slowed in order to take aim at something.  Reeve could imagine what.  He reached Cray and knocked his arm as the went to fire.  The shot went up into the air.

            "Cray! What are you doing!"

            Breathless, Cray gave Reeve a glare before digging into his pocket for more bullets and cracking the gun open to reload. 

            "Found him in Cara's bedroom. Pervert. Just asleep in her bed like nothing was wrong! I'll kill him!"

            "Cray, murder is not the answer. Trust me. Let's go back to my place and talk okay?"  Reeve tried soothingly. 

*

            Looking around furtively, Cait was happy to see that no one was still lingering around the house.  Elena had dashed out after Reeve a few seconds ago and plunged into the woods on the other side of the clearing.

            While Cait had needed a distraction to get Reeve out of the house for a few minutes, he hadn't planned on what had actually happened.  He was just sitting below the window in the snow, plotting out ideas when Cray had decided to take practice shots at Reno's bare ass as it had shot through town. Surely a target not easily missed, but one that blended with the snow a little too unhealthily.

            But Reno's lack of tan was the last thing on his mind. At least Reeve had been forced to leave the house to stop the massacre in the woods. 

            Smiling as if he'd as good as plotted the entire diversion himself, Cait turned and jumped in through the crack of open window. 

*

            "I don't want to talk." Cray spat back at him angrily.

            He could see that talking Cray out of murdering Reno wasn't going to be as easy as he had hoped. And he wasn't sure if he blamed Cray at all for his anger. If he had a daughter. And one day he found her in bed with a guy like Reno, he might be a little more than tempted to shoot the bastard himself. However, whether he agreed with Cray or not, he was Reno's friend though.

            "Cray, listen to me. It's not worth shooting him. Trust me. I've been tempted to myself over the years." 

            Cray's eyes narrowed at something in front of them and took off again through the snow, darting around Reeve as nimbly as a man half his age. Making a frustrated noise in the back of his throat, Reeve took off after him.

*

            Cait landed on the floor with almost no sound, except for his bookbag being pulled in through the window after him. Once on the ground the stood up and began a sweep of the room with his eyes, a thoughtful look on his face.

            _Now, if I were an enhanced staff weapon, and Reeve wanted to hide me from an overeager robotic cat with no sense…where would I be?_

Cait eyes stopped their rotation of the room on a cupboard fixed high on the wall not far from Reeve's bed. A slow smile split Cait's face.

            "Gotcha."

            Plunking himself down onto the floor he rummaged around in his bag till he found the slim leather case that held Reno's lock picking tools. It sure had been nice of the Turk to leave them so conveniently located in the bottom of a draw hidden under all his clothes like that where Cait could easily find them.

            Clamping two of the tools between his teeth, Cait put the case back in his bag and stood up again. Now all he needed to do was find a way to get up to the cupboard. 

*

            "Freeze right there!" 

            Reeve burst into the small clearing just as Cray had called out his command for Reno to halt. Being caught out in the open like this, Reno didn't have anywhere to go for cover. At least not as quickly as Cray could fire off a shot.  Reno stopped running and turned back toward Cray, a hopeful look on the Turk's face. Probably hopeful that Cray was only trying to scare him. Reeve knew better though. 

Seeing Cray raise his gun, Reeve didn't slow down but ran hard into the clearing, skidding to a stop between the gun and Reno. 

"Cray wait." Reeve tried again.

"Reeve I told you to get outta the way. This is between me and that pervert behind you."

"You can't shoot him." Reeve said hurriedly, he could hear Elena crashing her way toward them somewhere behind Cray. She still sounded a little ways off though and he wished she would hurry up. She was much better at talking to people than he was.

"Why not?" Cray snarled.

"Because…" Reeve fumbled for the right words but couldn't come up with any. He could almost feel Reno's scowl at his back from the pause. "Because he's my friend?" He wished that hadn't sounded like a weak question.

"Your daughter would be very upset." Reno offered.

Both men moved their eyes to him. "Shut-UP!"

*

Cait stood there and looked at the cupboard for a while, debating which would be the best way for him to get up there and pick the lock. He was almost positive Reeve would have locked it being the overcautious and wholly paranoid man that he was. 

Cait's eyes flittered over to his Mog and his smile grew bigger.

Jumping up onto the counter, he ran along its edge till he came to where it ended beside his Mog. He hopped up onto this Mog's back and flipped the switch behind the furry white ear and the Mog straighten up as the power flowed through its limbs. 

"Now Mog, I need you for a secret mission and you're not to tell Reeve that I did this okay." The Mog didn't respond as usual. "Not that what I'm doing is naughty," Cait assured the impassive Mog in a rush, "it's just that Reeve gets so worked up over the littlest things and I don't want him to have a stroke or anything. I really am doing this for his own good. If I test the staff, it'll be one less thing that he had to do. And you know how busy Reeve is all the time. So you see I'm really helping him." 

There was really no reason for him to be explaining this to the Mog. The Mog wouldn't comprehend a single thing he said. But he told himself that the Mog had a right to know anyway. And besides explaining things to the Mog like this made /him/ feel much better about what he was doing. He was helping Reeve out with his workload, not acting on total irrational impulse to play with his new dangerous toy.

"Okay Mog, let's go."

The Mog spurred into motion at Cait's voice command lumbered forward…and straight into the corner of the counter with a disturbing metallic clang. 

Cait scrambled back into position after nearly falling off the Mog and rolled his eyes.  

"/Around/ the bench Mog. Not through it." The Mog was still having trouble negotiating obstacles. Something was wrong with his sensors, Cait was sure. "Let's try this again. C'mon Mog,"

The Mog didn't respond. Actually it was buzzing quite disturbingly. The hit with the bench must have damaged something.

"Mog?" Cait rapped on the Mog's head a few times before climbing over its head and staring at the big black eyes. They had stopped glowing. Muttering to himself, Cait clambered back into position and flipped the Mog off. The Mog sagged. After waiting a few seconds, he flipped it back on. The Mog straighten and the buzzing stopped.

"Odd." Cait muttered. "C'mon Mog," He said louder, "Let's get to that cupboard before Reeve gets back."

*

Something, probably an animal rustled among the trees above Cray, but the man steadfastly kept his gun trained toward Reno. Unfortunately that meant that it was pointing straight at Reeve's chest. The idea of getting shot had never appealed to him as he supposed it didn't to many people. But the idea of catching a shotgun pellet in his chest made sweat roll down his back and the hairs on the back of his neck stand up.

"But you can't kill him."

He almost expected another 'why not?' but what he did get was perhaps a little more disturbing. Cray smiled slightly manically. "I'm not gonna kill him Reeve. Your right about that." Reeve heard Reno breath a sigh of relief behind him, but he had the feeling Cray wasn't finished. "I'm going to shoot out a kneecap. He can live without a leg surely."

The sigh behind him turned into a sharp intake of breath. Obviously Reno had finally noticed the note of dead seriousness in Cray's voice. Reeve definitely had.

*

The cupboard opened easily enough. He wasn't even surprised that he even knew how to pick a lock. He had just assumed that that would have been a useful Turk skill that Reno had passed onto him.

Standing on his toes upon the Mog's head he flung open the two little wooden doors and spotted his staff lying on the bottom self all by itself. The new materia in the slots gleamed with a small green glow almost begging Cait to be used in all their shiny newness. Gingerly Cait picked up the staff and went to climb back down onto his usual seat atop the Mog.

That's when the world began to shake.

*

Reno must have come to see Reeve this morning. At least he hadn't been in his room at the Inn. Rude knew his co-worker had been going out last night, but he had expected him to be back by now. Cait hadn't even been in the room.

He was halfway across the roadway, such as it was, on his way to Reeve's place when he heard the crash. Immediately he hastened his steps toward the lab.

*

Cait couldn't help toppling off his precarious perch atop the Mog. He tumbled down the Mog's back until his back hit the floor with a heavy thud. Luckily his bag had taken most of the force so he didn't think he broken anything. At least nothing attached to /him/. Surprisingly, he still had a firm hold on his staff.

But what the hell had made him fall? The ground wasn't shaking as he thought it must have been.

_Mog must have moved_

But his Mog never moved. Not on its own. Never without his command.

He made himself look up at the big white body that loomed over him, it's big black eyes glowing. He was sure the Mog had been facing the wall too.

Cait was just beginning to think it might be a good idea to move away from the Mog when he saw it move. It swept a massive arm up over its head before sweeping it back down to where Cait lay. With a yelp, Cait rolled out of the way and leapt onto his feet in one fluid motion. He was surprised he'd been able to move. He was still very shocked that the Mog had moved on it's own let alone moved to attack him.

Surely enough the big body began to lumber toward him. This time Cait couldn't really find it in himself to move out of the way. It was odd enough seeing the thing move without him sitting atop it. All he could manage was to bring his staff up in time to deflect a blow intended to knock his head from his shoulders. The forced of the blow was still amazingly strong though and sent Cait tumbling to one side and along the ground. He barely had enough time to bring his staff up again to stop another downward blow by the Mog.

Across the room, the door crashed open and Rude came in, gun drawn. He took one look at Cait fighting the big stuffed Mog, relaxed and holstered his weapon.

"Something wrong Cait?" He asked conversationally.

It seemed to Cait as though the Mog was using it's whole body weight in order to crush him. The only thing that prevented the Mog's arms from getting him was his feet that were firmly planted in the Mog's belly, holding it at bay.

"There," Cait ground out between his teeth, "Is a five foot large white mog attacking me. What the /fuck/ do you think is wrong you dense asshole!?"

The Mog was slowly but surely, getting closer. Cait readjusted his grip on the staff and jabbed the end straight into the chest of the mog with the fleeting thought;

_You know it's a bad day when your own giant white monster tries to kill you. He could at least pick on something a little bigger._

A blinding white light filled the room, emanating from the staff in Cait's paws and the Mog finally fell forward to land on it's belly on the floor with nothing now there to stop it.

*

Forcing his eyes open Cait nearly fell over. Luckily he was still on his back on the ground though. 

He was laying in an expansive green field with the sun beating down on him from above. A few fluffy white clouds played across the sky on the horizon while he could hear the calls of seagulls from somewhere behind him. 

He was on a grass field, on a beautiful day as far as he could see. And from the heat of the sun above he could tell that wherever he was a lot warmer than the day had been in Icicle Village. Of course, Cait was no longer in Icicle Village anymore. Hence his shock.

He must have accidentally activated the staff.

In front of him the ground sloped gradually downwards into a valley cloaked in perpetual dusk from the layer of smog that hung over it like a cloud of flies over a piece of chocobo dung. Bright lights glowed up from what was undoubtedly a city, even in the daylight.

Cait got to his feet and scratched his head. He felt he ought to know what that place was called, but for some reason, he couldn't put a name to it. He was still pondering this when a loud roar from behind him made him spin around. All he could see was feet. Clawed, huge, white feet. Then Cait looked up.

"Midgar." He remembered hurriedly. There was no missing what the huge monster was that had triggered the memory of what the city was. He had of course remembered reading about it. But he couldn't bring himself to name the monster. To do so would be admitting to something Cait felt a little uncomfortable doing.

The monster plodded along up from the direction of the shoreline, a large airship buzzing around its head like some sort of hungry vulture.

"Well, that's not something you see everyday." Cait said trying to sound cheerful. It wasn't working very well, he still couldn't shake the odds of a big white monster attacking a dark city named Midgar happening…again.

All Cait could think of was getting back home. He'd take his big white Mog any day rather than stick around here with that thing. 

Planting the switch end of the staff on the ground he saw the monsters shoulder cannons open up and dozens of energy blasts streak off in the direction of the city.

The staff began to glow white as he watched the beams.

_Hate to see the damage /that's/ gonna cause._

*

He wasn't back in the Village. Wherever he was, this was not the lab. This was a room with nice furniture with floor to ceiling glass windows that showed off and expanse of city buildings and glowing lights far below. He was facing the windows when he appeared and was taken with the sight of the city that it took him a while to realize that he was not where he intended to be.  All he new was that Junon had nothing on this city. it was way bigger and more brightly lit. It was rather quite breathtaking actually. Cait had to force his eyes away from the window to actually look around and find out where he was.

When he turned he saw a man standing slightly behind the desk Cait was standing on and wearing an increasingly startled expression. Cait supposed he's be startled too if someone had suddenly appeared standing on a piece of furniture in the lab as well. 

"Hello." Cait said conversationally. The man looked awfully familiar. White coat, blond hair, wide blue eyes.

Wait. Big city building, high office. White coat, blond hair, wide blue eyes…

"Say, you're Rufus Shinra aren't you?" Cait frowned worriedly. "Aren't you dead?" He was really getting sick of Rufus staring at him like a stunned guppy fish though. Dead or not, the man was being just rude!

"I'm sure Reno put a note in here about you being dead." Cait continued fumbling in his bag for the journal, "He's usually not so bad when remembering things like that." Cait got the journal out and started flipping through it. "Here it is. It says that Rufus Shinra died when Diamond Weapon shot out the top floor of the Shinra Building." Cait beamed happily looking up from his book. The frown soon came back though. "I guess that means that the big white monster really /was/ Diamond Weapon then. What are the chances of it happening twice?"

Rufus was still staring. It was beginning to get on Cait's nerves. He jammed the journal back into his bag and went to tell him that it wasn't polite to stare when the words stuck in his throat. Rufus wasn't looking at him. Rufus was looking over him.

Cait glanced around quickly in time to see the first few beams of light fly past the office windows. Realizing what was happening he almost lost his staff over the side of the desk before he could grab a proper hold to activate it.

"For fucks sake /duck/!" He yelled at Rufus before he slammed the butt end of the staff down onto the polished desktop. He only wished that Rufus were closer, he might have been able to save him too. He really didn't want to see Reno's friends die, evil or not, as he had been told Rufus had been. Perhaps that was more the reason for not making a heroic leap to save the man. If he remembered, the man hadn't been wholly nice to Reeve either. At least that's what the journal had said.

Unfortunately it was the previous thought about Reno's friends dying that had stuck with him when the scene began to white out once more. 

The glass behind him shattered.

*

Cait couldn't work out the mural on the wall in front of him. Lots of pyramids and a big black circle with a few wavy lines. All he knew was that either Reeve had redecorated the lab, or he still wasn't home.

He believed the latter as much as he didn't want to. He had appeared next to the wall, his nose almost touching a carved stick figure on the mural etched on the entire length of the wall. He wasn't an art buff, but he knew what he didn't like. This was one such piece. Torchlight flickered on the wall he was looking at and he turned slowly around in a circle to take in his surroundings. Nothing amazing really. A glowing temple plan on a pedestal, a few torches in sconces around the walls. Couple of piles of rubble on the stone floor. A dark haired man in a blue suit being impaled by a long masume blade held by a man with ludicrously long white hair and a black studded leather fetish. A set of golden double doors. And a…_hang on…_

Cait backtracked. 

At the end of the room stood a man with long flowing silver hair in strange black clothing. On his knees before the man, the man's long blade through his stomach was another man. In a dark navy blue suit and long black hair. A man he recognized from the photo, just as he had with Rufus. And man who, like Rufus, was also meant to be dead. Killed in the Temple of the Ancients by Sephiroth.

It was Tseng.

As he watched, Sephiroth jerked his blade free and Tseng fell forward onto the ground as if the sword through his stomach had been the only thing holding him up. Before Cait knew what he was doing he was running forward and yelling; "Nooooooooooooooo!"

His yelled protest was pulled up short as well as his running toward the fallen Turk. Pulled up by his own confusion. He skidded to a stop and proceeded to look confused. 

_Where had that come from? I didn't know that guy._

Did Reno think it was a skill of his to agonize over peoples deaths?

Whatever it was, Cait didn't have much of a chance to think about it for too long. At his yell, Sephiroth's cool green mako eyes swiveled over to him and narrowed slightly. If Cait were human he would have swallowed quite audibly.  He almost apologized for interrupting even.

The look seemed to be the only thing that Sephiroth was willing to give him though and stalked right past him without a word toward the golden double doors. Before he got there, he disappeared.  Looking about him hurriedly to make sure Sephiroth had indeed disappeared, he told his brain to stop panicking and his knees to stop shaking so irritably. 

"His staff must work properly."

Timidly he started over toward Tseng. The man was still breathing, if barely and his eyes fluttered open as Cait knelt beside him.

"You don't look so good." Cait told him dumbly. He didn't know what else to do. He couldn't save the man, that was obvious. Unless he took him with him. But Cait wasn't sure if he could anyway. 

He didn't want to admit it was possible, but he knew what was happening. His staff was allowing him to time travel. Time, Earth, and Gravity materia all working as one with the unexpected result of sending the user through time. Cait might have been excited by the concept had it not been for the lack of control when using it. So far he'd only seen a few very depressing glimpses of past events. A major drawback so far and one Cait was not thrilled about. Reeve's experiment wasn't working quite the way he had imagined so there was no way to tell if Reeve himself would know precisely what was going on. What would happen if he removed someone from the past and took them back into the present? Would it screw things up that were meant to happen in the future? Or would he be saving the life of a man the Turks would give their right arms to have back? One half of him was telling him to be prudent. The other half was telling him to go for it and fuck consequences. The latter was a much louder voice. But he had to force himself to think properly.

"Reeve?" Tseng asked apparently to Cait.

Excited, Cait swung his head round and searched the room out with his eyes before finally realizing what Tseng meant. 

"No." Cait told him but Tseng didn't seem to hear.

"Make sure Reno doesn't do anything stupid."

Cait clenched his jaw and wracked his brain. There must be something he could do that wouldn't upset Time too much. "He won't." Cait assured him. "He'll be fine, I guarantee it. Though perhaps somebody should tell him to forget about a girl named Cara and her overprotective father." Cait reached over and smoothed some hair off Tseng's face with a paw. "The others will be fine too. Elena will fall in love with a great guy. And Rude will be….well….Rude. And they'll stay together. You don't have to worry." If memory served, Avalanche should be coming here soon. If he could get Tseng to somewhere where they could see him in the state he was, they should help him. There were the good guys weren't they? They'd help him and Cait wouldn't have to worry about ending existence or anything just as nasty. "I'll even keep an eye on them." But if he were so sure Avalanche would help Tseng, why was he talking to the man like he was going to die.

Tseng half smiled through the pain he must be experiencing. "You sound so sure."

Cait stood and walked toward Tseng's feet bending down momentarily to grab the man's ankles. "I am sure." Cait grunted as he hefted the man's legs and began dragging him toward the golden double doors. It was tough work. Cait was strong for his size, but his size was immensely small. If Tseng had resisted Cait's dragging him, even in his feeble condition, Cait would be going nowhere. What he really needed was some help. But of course there was no one to help him. Reeve and the others weren't even aware of him in this time let alone here to help. He did think about waiting till Avalanche came, but Tseng needed help faster than it might take them to come all the way in here. It was him or nothing. 

Readjusting his grip, Cait grit his teeth and tried to go faster.

"That fortune telling story," the talking was more pained now, either from the wound or Cait dragging him, "won't work with me Reeve."

Cait almost looked over his shoulder again. "I'm not Reeve." Cait told him quietly, but Tseng had lost consciousness.  He didn't regain it again till they were back in the main entrance of the temple, after taking the quick route out. This is where Avalanche would have to come, they would see him here.

He propped Tseng up against one of the pillars just as the Turk's eyes fluttered open once more. 

"What I wouldn't give for some cure materia." Cait grumbled.

"It..wouldn't help." Tseng told him. 

Cait thought he could hear voices from outside. A little faint at the moment, but it wouldn't take long for the voices to come closer. He supposed this is where they were coming, there was nowhere else on this island to go. There were maybe eight different ones. Some young, some old, some deep, some whiney, but only one mechanical one. Quickly he left Tseng's side and peeked out of the doorway. At the foot of the stairs was Avalanche. Even though Cait had never seen them except  two, there was no missing that spiky head of blond hair, even with the distance.

"Avalanche are here." Cait told Tseng. "They'll help you."

Cait scanned the group till he found what he was really looking for. Cait Sith Mark 1. On the back of his big white mog standing a little apart from the group as they decided who would go into the temple.

He came back over to Tseng and slipped the staff off his back. He wasn't sure if it was a good idea to be here when Avalanche came. Not when they already had a Cait Sith in their party. Too many questions when all they really needed to do was focus on Tseng and getting help for him. 

Tseng was chuckling softly at Cait's last comment. "Perhaps." 

"They /will/ help won't they?" Cait asked a worriedly. "I mean even if Reeve doesn't come up here with the others, they'll help won't they?"

Tseng's brow creased as he watched Cait wring his paws around the staff. He seemed to be thinking about something. "Your predictions,. from before about my Turks. It sounded as though you meant it as truth."

"It was the truth." Cait said quietly. 

He could hear the footsteps climbing the stairs of the temple now. They were getting closer. He really ought to leave.

"Thankyou." Tseng told him.

Cait tried to grin but it wasn't working. "Thank /you/ Tseng."

Cait used the staff.

_Damn Sephiroth for putting me in this position. What could possibly make a monster like that?!_

*

This place stunk. It sure smelt like a lab. Chemicals, a must odor and a faint smell of smoke.  But this was not /his/ lab. He knew that before he even thought of opening his eyes.  Now that he knew he wasn't home, he wasn't sure if he wanted to open them at all. Just use the staff again and hope for home.

So without opening his eyes, he hit the butt end of his staff on the ground.

Nothing happened.

No bright light.

No change of smells.

Nothing.

Cait opened his eyes enough to look down and the staff in his paw.  That was where the smoke was coming from. The slots in his staff. He must have fried the circuitry jumping from place to place. And now he was stuck in some weird lab smelling place with no way to get home. He was pretty sure he couldn't fix it. His 'Reeve' skills should allow that he /might/ be able to do something with it if forced to, but definitely not without some kind of blueprints as a guide. 

Cait smacked the staff down hard a few times on a convenient desk beside him before trying it again. Again, the slots refused to spin. 

"Shit, broken." Cait muttered disgustedly throwing his staff down onto the floor and frowning at it in what he imagined to be a very unimpressed way.

"Such language Professor Gast. I would've thought a man with your education would not succumb to such a base language to express yourself."

Cait started at the voice and raised his head toward the man who had spoken with that cold tone. Being so intent upon his staff he hadn't noticed the man at all until he had spoken. And now Cait wished he hadn't at all. The voice had been creepy enough in those cool arrogant tones without having to see that cruel face with the narrowed dark eyes behind the round glasses. Now that he had a chance to see around him some more, he couldn't be sure he was in a lab at all. The place looked more like a library. 

"W-who?" Cait stuttered.

"Though, if you hadn't made it speak I might not have noticed it at all. Stealthy little toy you have there Professor. He would make a rather excellent spy." The man's eyes narrowed a hair more. "That is of course, if that is not already his purpose."

"I'm not a spy!" Cait told the man indignantly. Really, he didn't know why he was talking back to this guy. He was perhaps the only person apart from Sephiroth so far that had managed to make Cait more than a little afraid. At least enough to make his knees want to tremble and his hair stand on end. Then why was he sticking up for himself so adamantly? 

"Be that as it may Gast, but you assured that you would not interfere in my experiments while here. I would ask your little pet to leave. Sir." The sir was assuredly said as an afterthought, but it had a stunning effect on Cait being called Sir. 

"That's quite alright. You go on ahead and do," Cait made a confused gestured with his paws, "whatever the hell it is that you do. I'll leave you to it."

Cait was most definitely stumbling as he picked up his staff and made his way toward the rough outline of the doorway. He didn't quite make it. Too late he realized why. Using the staff must have put a drain on his own power as well. So drastically as to not show up on his internal sensors and so suddenly show the effects for him not to realize what was going on till it was too late. He should have realized it was just like using materia at any other time and would drain his batteries faster as a result. In this case perhaps even three times as fast. Talking back to the lab coat wearing cold eyed man had been nothing but Cait's version drunken bravado gone nuts. Now he found himself on his back staring up at the scowling face of the cold eyed man, unable to move. If he had enough wits left to be petrified he would be. He was after all stuck in the past somewhere away from Reeve and his friends in a place they wouldn't even be able to look if they knew, with a broken staff and on the last dregs of his power.

"You waste my time Gast." The man mumbled. "I suppose I will return your toy to you if I must." He raised his head to shout  something unintelligible toward the doorway. Cait heard light steps come into the room and stop by him, but he couldn't swivel his head enough to look at the newcomer. 

Cold eyes said to the other man, "Mr. Valentine, would you take the Professor's toy back to him." The tone was sharp. More sharp than he'd even used on Cait, "And if anything else slips past you to interrupt my work I will make sure the President hears about it."

*****************

_Notes: Hmmm, too fast? Well, a little bit happened in this chapter didn't it? *grins* enjoyable? Sad? Boring? I liked it. It was meant to be funner, but I didn't realize till later that if Cait had too much fun in all the little scenes he'd end up looking pretty heartless. There were also meant to be more, but the Tseng one kinda ran longer than I expected it to so I had to cut it down one. So he's now stuck back in Vincent Valentine times with no way home huh? Poor little Cait. *evil cackle* poor little Vincent._

_Next chapter coming soon_

_AF_

_anime_fearie@excite.com_

_all my stories can be found on the 70th Floor at Neo Midgar_

_http://www.geocities.com/anime_fearie/_

_home of all the world's greatness. Or at least some of it._


	3. Part III

****

**A Different Kind Of Superhero – **

Episode I

**Baby's First Birthday**

_By AF_

**Part III**

_~_

_"If this is a joke. Notice closely how I am not laughing."_

_- Vincent Valentine_

_~_

At first there was darkness. 

            Then a soft hum.

            Slowly the hum grew stronger till consciousness came flooding back. And he was aware.

            Numbers scrolled over his dark vision behind his closed lids.

Starting Internal Drivers...

Check.

Internal Drivers Nominal.

Starting Systems Check...

Check Complete. 

All Systems Nominal.

Bringing Systems Online...

Sensors;

Vision

Nigh Vision

Aural

Voice Syth Equalizer

Audio

Maximum Audio

Sense

Sensor Check Complete.

Internal Battery Test...

Test Complete;

57% Primary Power

42% Secondary Power.

Checking Memory...

Uploaded all added data.

Booting...

     Sometimes he wished there was a fast forward button for all that garbage. 

            Before opening his eyes, he stretched slightly to make sure he could move properly before swearing softly and trying to get at least into a sitting position. He remembered little from before his battery drained completely. And what he did remember from before that was more than enough evidence to support his theory that his batteries were on the blink. Hallucinations undoubtedly. Reeve must have found him after he passed out and fixed him. Usually he didn't like draining so much power before being able to renew it. He always 'woke up' afterwards with this feeling like his head was full of water and his body didn't want to obey him properly. At least now all his systems were registering fine, he seemed to be fixed and his first uncomfortable moments of coming back online would fade within half and hour or so.

            Feeling a lot better about his present condition, he went ahead and opened his eyes….

                                    …….and immediately almost fell onto his back again.

            A solid looking unfamiliar man in a white lab coat, greying hair almost to his shoulders stared at Cait from his position on the stool next to the bench Cait was sitting on. He must have sworn at the sight, because the man frowned at him and scratched his head awkwardly.

            "…H-Hullo." Cait began uncertainly edging back from the man without trying to look like that is what he was doing. He failed miserably.

            "Who are you?" The man asked. He may have looked something like a kindly man, but his voice was stern.

            "Cait Sith." Cait said in the proudest tone he could muster. Which at this point, wasn't all that proud. He was determined not to show too much fear to this stranger though. Reno always taught that  showing fear was showing an enemy they had won at least half the fight already. And while Cait couldn't be sure this man was an enemy exactly, he sure wasn't any ally that Cait knew of. "Who are you?"

            "You are not." The man cut him off irritably. "Whoever you are, you have stolen my plans to build this robot. The evidence stands before me. I demand a name."

            "I told you my name." Cait protested. Earlier fright was quickly turning into indignation. This man wasn't talking to him. He seemed to be talking /through/ him. That was too close to talking /over/ him for any kind of comfort. He hated it when people did that. "You could at least tell me yours."

            "My name," The man began, his tone only getting sterner if anything, "is Gast. And you are a thief. I wonder," Gast began in what he must have hoped was a threatening tone, "if you know exactly what Turks are. Well, I have three here at my disposal. I can easily trace this signal from the robot,  and I'm quite willing to send them on an errand to fetch you. I cannot abide thieves. You should make it easier on yourself and simply tell me your name."

            "Of course I know what Turks are." Cait replied, no longer worried at all. If the threat of three Turks, who happened to be personal friends of Cait's was the best this guy could throw at him, he had no reason to be worried at all.  He stood slowly and began to brush the dust and dirt from him fur. "I didn't know Reno had taken another job, he…" Cait stopped preening himself and looked at the man closely, "What did you say your name was?" Cait was starting to feel slightly ill again.

            "Gast." The man replied clearly at the end of his patience.

            Cait smacked his forehead and sank back down onto his butt. "You're fucking kidding me. I thought I was hallucinating. You mean all that stuff from before was real?"

            "What was real?" Gast seemed to have lost some of the angry edge to his voice and was watching Cait very closely.

            "All that stuff. Midgar, the weapon, Rufus, Tseng, all of it?"  Not that Gast would know of course. But Cait felt he needed /something/. Some sort of confirmation. Of course he realised the man sitting in front of him should be confirmation enough. It took him a while, but everything was starting to sink in. His travels through time, the knowledge that he'd broken his only hopes of getting home, and of course, the Professor here. The original designer for Cait Sith Mark I. 

            "You made me." Cait said softly. "Well," he amended, "kind of." Cait began warming to the realisation. "Nice work really. Though I have a few complaints. For one thing, you could have given me a little something more, if you know what I mean. I mean, do you realise how hard it is to get rid of sexual tensions when you don't have a p-"

            "Hold on a moment." Gast cut him off. "Are you insinuating that you are /really/ the robot, talking to me?"

            "Of course I am." Cait answered as if it were obvious. "Who the hell did you think was talking to you?"

            "The person controlling you. The robot I mean," Gast added hurriedly lest he be seen to be believing what he was being told, "controlling the robot. I don't know how you stole my plans, let alone how you managed to steal them and complete a prototype before even my own was fully functional." Gast went on, though in a tone much milder.  "This unit is not a toy."

            "Unit?" Cait questioned, "I've never been called that before, but it sounds insulting. Nevermind that, you aren't listening to me. I'm not being controlled. I'm just me. Get it? And of course I'm not a toy." Cait straighten up and puffed out his chest, "I've bested a Wutian Warrior from the great temple dontcha know. I'm a hero."

            Gast watched Cait for a few minutes while the little robot ranted on. He seemed perplexed. "Perhaps force is not necessary." Gast began in a much more civil tone. "Regardless of the theft, I would be quite interested in meeting you, whoever you are. Your abilities in robotics appear to be very good. Your unit moves with a style and grace, not to mention speed that I have not been able to incorporate into my own. I would be most interested to hear how you accomplished this feat."

            The hopeful look on Cait face fled. "You don't believe me do you? Look, run your test. You'll see that there is no one controlling me."

            Cait was surprised when Gast actually appeared to hear that one. 

            "Very well. Just a moment."

            Gast stood up from the stool and wandered over toward a computer sitting on a cluttered desk just across from where he was perched. He tapped a few keys and watched the screen intently for a few moments. Eventually both grey busy eyebrows rose in astonishment and he turned back to Cait with wide eyes. "How did you manage to block my trace. I work with the best equipment Shinra can buy. It's….well, it's impossible."

            "Wait till you hear the half of it." Cait grinned. "What I'm telling you is the truth. Run whatever tests you will, I promise it'll only back up those claims."

            "But it just isn't possible." Gast spluttered. "I've only begun work on my prototype. I'm years off doing what you are suggesting. Nobody could have beaten me. Especially not with my own plans."

            Cait winced a little at what he might tell the Professor. He was so caught up in proving to the man that he wasn't some kind of cheap knockoff that he had totally overlooked the repercussions this conversation might have. A few ideas sprang to mind. He could lie, say he'd been joking and there really was a device to combat tracking. But that could lead into many bad circumstances. He could try and escape. But where would that leave him? Gast obvious had the means to recharge his battery. Who knew what help this man could provide in getting him home? Reeve's inventions were nothing but his own ideas added on to the templates he'd recovered of Gasts work. That left only one alternative. He tells Gast the truth. 

            "You may not believe what I have to tell you."

            "It is shock enough that you can sit there and talk to me. I believe I can handle most everything by now." Gast answered a might ruefully no still no less wide eyed.

            Cait heaved a sigh and sat on the bench. "First. Where is my bag?"

            "Your bag?" Gast looked around for a moment before moving to retrieve the book bag from a drawer from the desk. He crossed over and handed it to Cait. Cait dug around in it for a few moments before pulling a thick book free. Flipping the book open to the bag, he pulled a stack of photos out and put them down onto the bench beside him. One he kept and handed to the Professor.

            "That," Cait began, "is a photo of the man who built me. His name is Reeve. A little old now, it was taken a couple of years before I was born while he was still working at Shinra." Cait pulled another photo free and handed it over to the baffled Professor as well. "/That/ is a man by the name of Reno. He's a Turk."

            "A Turk?" Gast questioned looking the two photos over closely. "I've never heard of a Turk named Reno. I I've worked for this company for a good many years. And this man named Reeve? I've never seen him either."

            "You're not likely to meet them either." Cait told him slowly. "Because neither have probably been born yet."

            Cait watched Gasts face go through a multitude of differing emotions ranging from all out shock to just plain disbelief. 

            "The reason you think I am years ahead in production is because I really am. Many years ahead. I am from the future."

            Through Cait's little speech, Gasts hand had begun creeping to a spot by his computer where what looked like an intercom sat. Cait was thinking that his little speech wasn't going over too well.

            "I can prove it." Cait insisted. "I know things. Ask me a question."

            "Okay," Gast began gamely. "But surely you won't mind brining another ear into the conversation will you? I really would rather have someone else here to hear what you have to say."

            Roughly translated; 'I don't trust you and I'm calling for backup. Either I'm a loony tune, or you are.' Cait nodded slowly though he really would have preferred not to let anyone else know about him.

            Gast pressed the button on the intercom and told whoever it was outside to come inside. It was a Turk. Upon entry, the dark-haired man took in a quick scan of the room in that all encompassing look Turks seemed to be trained for, before shutting the door and facing the Professor. He ignored Cait completely. 

            "You have found the culprit?" The Turk asked in a soft clear voice. Whoever this man was, he held an air of coolness and distant familiarity about him that tickled the back of Cait's mind.

            "No but I would like you to hear this." Gast told him gesturing towards Cait. Dark eyes swept toward Cait sitting there without a hint of anything in their depths. Just the coolness. The gaze made Cait fidget uncomfortably. 

            "As you wish Professor."

            Gast turned back to Cait. "Go on."

            "Right." Cait tried to ignore the cold eyed Turk, but he couldn't help but feel nervous. From what he knew of Turks, they weren't meant to be like this. Not even Rude displayed anything like this let alone Reno or Elena. And for some reason this Turk reminded him a lot of Tseng. Though he looked nothing like Tseng save the intense dark eyes and hair color. "My name is Cait Sith. Not the same Cait Sith you are making now. I am the second to be built after the first was lost on a mission. Constructed by a man named Reeve who was Head of Urban Development at Shinra Inc. from the original designs of the Mark One. Now," Cait paused looking a little bit sheepish, "from here on in, it gets a little confusing."

            Then Cait proceeded to tell them about what had happened and how he came to be born.

***

 "If this is a joke. Notice closely how I am not laughing."

That came from the Turk causing Cait to blink at the man uncertainly. It was the first words the man had spoken since Cait had begun talking. Gast had frequently interrupted with questions or comments. Cait had begun to think that the dark haired man wasn't listening to him at all. Apparently he had though. 

"It isn't a joke." Cait protested. "Though I wish it were." He hadn't told them every little detail though. He wasn't sure why, but he had a nagging suspicion that it wouldn't be a good idea to reveal too much of the future. After all, for most people at Shinra, it wouldn't be a happy one. Cait only hoped the two men had been able to follow well enough. He had had trouble staying on topic due to nervousness. Often he found himself rambling about some odd thing or another that had occurred to him whilst he had been speaking. He had the distinct impression that they hadn't enjoyed his story about putting a scoop of ice-cream in Reno's pocket after the Turk had thrown him into a snow drift. Or his totally witty impression of Rude being a stoic bad ass. The Turk in front of him hadn't seemed impressed in particular. Maybe the Turks of the future were a little different that he was used to now. 

"I wonder," Gast began thoughtfully, "If you could run through the basics once more. Quickly."

"The basics?" Cait repeated. 

"The very basics." Gast confirmed. Either the man hadn't been able to sort through all Cait had told him, or he was looking for differences in Cait's story. Perhaps to spot a lie.  Cait was happy enough to oblige. At least they weren't calling him an outright liar like Gast had been earlier. He'd at least instilled that much doubt in them. Another thing Reno always tried to teach him was to feed an opponents doubt, and give them a weakness to exploit.

"Thirty years from now, a man named Reeve will be talked into repairing a small robot that until that time had been locked away in some unimportant Shinra warehouse, to be used as a spy for a terrorist group who are opposing Shinra. That spy, is named Cait Sith by its creator Professor Gast. That model soon gets crushed in a building collapse while on the mission. A mark II is made from the original blueprints by Reeve, engineer and Head of Urban Development for Shinra Inc. Cait Sith Mark II is...well me. But not really. Anyway, Mark II finished the mission with the terrorist group, being controlled always by direct interface with Reeve. After the mission is over, Reeve leaves Midgar and retreats to an old lab located on the Northern Continent in Icicle Village where Professor Gast had a secondary lab and a private residence until his…retirement from Shinra several years beforehand. There Reeve sets about recovering the Professor's notes from anywhere they may have been stored as well as those left in the Village with one clear hope in mind. To provide the Mark II with an individual personality and working mind after reading the notes of Gasts' from the original blueprints about it being not only possible, but with the expressed want of the original creator that one day this would happen. With the help of the Turks, Reeve was able to recover a vast amount of notes and equipment and set to work on providing the Mark II a personality. In a very short time, he succeeded in using his own mind as a template along with one other template provided from one of the Turks. The leader of the Turks in this time. A man named Reno." Cait looked at the two hopefully, but a little uncertainly. /That/ explanation had been /very/ short. "Questions?"

Gast always had questions. "Who is this Reeve? Thirty years from now? That is a very long time."

"I guess it is." Cait agreed. "Reeve, well, I told you who Reeve is."

The questions might have been inane, but the Professor definitely looked at least a little interested in Cait's story. He still didn't know whether Gast thought he was lying, but his tale seemed interesting enough to provoke questions.

"Very well. Though I still don't understand what right this man has in stealing my notes for his own personal use."

"You say a man named Reno is head of the Turks in the future. I've never heard of him." The Turk cut in.

Cait cocked his head to the side for a second, still trying to figure out what it was about this man that tickled his memory so. "You wouldn't have. You missed the part earlier when I said that he hasn't been born yet. But he will be. In Midgar, somewhere in the slums of Midgar in about…" Cait trailed off realising something, "Actually I'm not entirely sure what the date is here." Cait picked up the Journal from where he had put it down and began to flip through the pages, one lip drawn up beneath a metallic canine. "Let's see, Gast, Gast, Gast,"

"It is the 20th of August," The Turk told him, "208."

"I know what the year is," Cait began irritably but cut himself off. How /had/ he known what the year was? After all he had told Gast that Reeve would resurrect him, Cait, around thirty years from now. And that was correct. But how could Cait have known that before asking? Seemingly of their own accord, his eyes flit up to rest on the cold eyed Turk. And he had his answer.

"You're Vincent Valentine." Cait told him numbly. Vincent only seemed to frown at this. Of course the Turk knew his own name. The point was that he had subconsciously known the year from that little fact alone. Well, it had still been a guess really. He had only come up with 208 because that was the last year Vincent Valentine would be a Turk at all, and because thirty was such a round number. His eyes widened slightly at this thought and he flipped through the Journal with open apprehension. Finding the page marked for the 26th of August, six mere days from now, Cait found what he was after. Tseng had it marked in his meticulous flowing script as the day Vincent Valentine disappeared. 

_Six days from now. _

Cait looked up at Vincent and bit his lip. "Oh boy."

Vincent's frown deepened and Cait made himself try and remember why he had wanted to know the exact date at all. His own ethical reasoning about wether to tell Vincent his future or not, could wait till later. Preferably when the man wasn't staring at him like that.

"Um, Reno will be born in 214 in the Midgar slums. A little over six years from now.  Reeve will be born," Cait paused to do the sum in his head and immediately redid it after coming up with his answer. It was the same as the first time though. "Reeve was born this year. About two months ago actually. In Junon." That was a shock. To learn that the man who had created him, his father, god, whatever, was at this moment a two month old infant in another city. 

He hurried on through the others lest they again tell him that they'd never heard of the name. Both men didn't seem to be able to grasp the simple concept that the time he was talking about was over thirty years in the future. "Elena in 216. And Rude in 211. None but Reeve have been born yet and you're hardly likely to get any answers out of him."

"What proof do you have that what you say is true?" Vincent began leaning back against a side bench and eyeing Cait in a way that made him know that the Turk was in no way relaxing. "Do we have to wait around for three years to prove your predictions accurate?"

_Well we could wait six days and see how accurate my predictions are, _Cait thought sourly toward the Turk. He hastily pushed that thought aside though. "No. Lemme see," Cait flipped back a few pages. The problem with the journal was that Tseng only seemed to write down what he thought was important. That meant that whole years could skip over without comment. Luckily, this year hadn't exactly been a dull one. Cait was happy with his find. "Yesterday a woman gave birth to…" Cait trailed off swallowing. Well, he did recall wondering how a monsters such as Sephiroth came into being didn't he? He seemed to recall that all his little jaunts put him in places that could be tied to what he was thinking of at the time. Little good that realisation did now. But it definitely presented possibilities. 

"How did you know about that!?" Vincent exclaimed, straightening from his position, eyes fixed in anger on Cait. From everything Reeve had told him about Vincent Valentine, was that the man was quiet, solemn and thoughtful. Though a little strange at times. But the man couldn't be faulted for that, not after he'd been through all he had. Cait idly wondered, while he wasn't busy being scared that the man was going to take his gun out and shoot him, where that quiet reserved Vincent was. Little of the new Vincent seemed in evidence here. At least not in the face of such a temper tantrum. Turks were trained to keep their cool in every sort of situation. Not even Elena went off like this, and most definitely not on a job. He guessed that the new Vincent wouldn't be seen till another thirty years or so. He had simply just not become the man he was in the future yet.

"I might have mentioned this," Cait began a little frightened but trying to look indignant, "but I /am/ from the future."

"What is this book you are reading?" Vincent asked, still angry. He tried to grab the book from Cait, but Cait flattened his ears and held the book behind his back. 

"Don't forget who else is Turk trained in this room." Cait reminded steadily, arrogance easily overcoming fear. "It was my birthday present from my friends. If you touch it, I will do whatever I have to to get it back."

Vincent snorted, clearly not worried one bit. "Your chocobo has fallen out of your bag."

Cait looked down at his bag and snatched up the blue bird in irritation and stuffed it back into his bag. It was difficult enough to win these pissing contests without his toys being seen. "Yeah well your fly is undone." Cait grumbled back. Cait at least felt some sense of accomplishment when the man checked himself to make sure Cait was in fact lying. He really didn't look impressed though.

Cait was surprised when he shifted his eyes to Gast to see the man looking like he was having the time of his life. He was smiling widely, face flushed with apparent strain at stopping himself from laughing. 

"You are quite some piece of work Cait." Gast commented shaking his head. "Though I would prefer more proof if you do not mind. That is if you and Mr. Valentine have finished playing with one another." It was a comment made in jest, and Cait had the feeling that it was directed more so at Vincent than at himself. 

"Well," He had the feeling that  the baby Sephiroth demon wasn't exactly safe to talk about, so he picked the person he would know best in this time if anyone. "Last year you recruited a man named Tseng into the Turks. I'm quite knowledgeable on that man. Ask me anything."

The corner of Vincent's mouth curled up into a nasty looking grin. Obviously he had finally found a way to prove Cait a liar. At least, /he/, thought so.

"How did Tseng become a Turk?" Vincent asked folding his arms across his chest. Cait scowled at the man. Reeve had also never mentioned the man being as arrogant as hell. He made Reno look like a member of Avalanche in comparison. 

Cait just grinned right back at him. The grin was just as nasty, the metallic teeth in his mouth making it look doubly so. 

"Originally recruited by the Turks to become a member of Soldier, he was singled out before graduation and sponsored by the current leader of the Turks for a position within their ranks. He rose to the position within a year of training. I believe you were his sponsor Mr. Valentine." Well calling him Mr. had worked for  Professor Gast in instilling in the man a sense of authority. Cait tried to conjure up a picture in his mind how exactly Tseng had phrased it in his journal without having to find the reference in the book. He had already drawn too much attention to that book already. " '_Vincent came to see me during training today saying he had a surprise for me. I was almost shaking as he led me out of the training grounds to a more private place. For ages now I had wanted to join the Turk ranks, and Vincent knew it. He had kept putting it off, telling me my training wasn't complete. But today, he told me that I was allowed the transfer. Special training pending. But I knew from the smug look on his face that I was in. I'm going to be a  Turk just like Vincent' ". _Vincent at least wasn't gaping at him open mouthed, but it was the Turk equivalent with his eyes as wide as that. "Did I mention that Tseng was a close friend of mine in the future?" Pure lie, but nobody would dispute it.  Nobody could. "Shall I continue?" Cait asked smugly. 

"How did I meet him?" Vincent asked a tad more quietly. 

"You met him when a young Tseng tried to put a knife in your back. He held everybody in Shinra responsible for his brother's death. You looked the most important man he could find at the time in Nibleheim. So he plotted to sneak up on you and kill you. Only you heard him coming. When he challenged you to fight him, you didn't accept. You asked him his name and why he sought to kill you. You became friends after that. He admired you, and took your advice to join Shinra and…" Cait cast a glance at the Professor and the slightly alarmed look on Vincent's face, "stuff." Cait said instead. Somehow it didn't seem a wise thing to say that Vincent had told Tseng to join Shinra in an effort to undermine the company's bad decisions from within. He mightn't like Vincent, but there was no reason to get Tseng in hot water over it. From the rest of the passage Cait had read regarding the first meeting, Tseng seemed to enjoy working for Shinra. What Cait could say might get the man fired. The future repercussions were too vast to think about. 

_Assuming I /can/ change the future, _Cait thought bitterly, _And that I /did/ help Tseng back at the Temple. If I can't change the future he would have died no matter what I did. _It was a disparaging thought. 

Vincent was looking at him now with a calculating expression. Though still nothing to indicate whether he still thought Cait was lying or not.

"A moment in private if you please Mr. Valentine." Gast said standing and walking toward the door Vincent had come in through. After a moment Vincent got up to follow, head bent still thinking. "Won't be a moment." Gast assured Cait before slipping though the door. 

When they were both gone, Cait opened the journal back to the page he wanted. He had something to think about that was possibly even more important than whether or not he should be warning people of their own deaths. He was going to see if he could alter time and save hundreds of people.

*

Vincent leant his back against the wall of Gast's living quarters without lifting his eyes from the rug. He was still in deep thought. Gast though crossed to the door across the room and peeked out into the hallway. After being satisfied that no one was out there that could eavesdrop, (at this time of night it was unlikely anyone was still up and about in the mansion) he shut the door and came to stand before the thoughtful Turk.

"Well," Gast prompted, "I wanted your level headed opinion Mr. Valentine. What do you think he is?"

"There are things," Vincent began but paused before rushing in with, "He just can't possibly know about all that. Tseng would never tell another soul. He can be more secretive about his past than any Turk I've ever known."

"That's something." Gast agreed dryly. 

"And that quote or whatever it was. That sounded like Tseng even." Vincent shook his head in apparent disbelief. "I can't believe I'm saying this, but I think I believe him."

"He is years ahead of anything I can construct." Gast continued, "He doesn't move as if he is being remote controlled. I've only begun to work out the basics of his, or should I say Mark I's workings. His speech is flawless. Though I do wonder about the men he said provided templates for his personality and skills. A top level executive and a Turk. I shudder at the mixed influence. I don't trust what this Reeve has done to my invention. Though I have to admit, it is a marvel to see my theories in working order. Apparently the SpinSlots work too. I had to wonder."

"You believe him too?" Vincent asked unnecessarily. 

"I can't deny, that not even I could have constructed what you have seen in there with Cait. At least not with a few years to refine the plans. The prototype was never meant to move much beyond speech and sitting on a mode of transportation. Even if this engineer is working off some kind of plans I may make in the future, it is another thing to see the working product of mere theories in front of my eyes. His responses, movement, everything. I wonder what his intelligence is? I'd hardly call him slow-witted. He exchanged words with you well enough."

"If I may suggest something Sir?"

"Of course."

"Even if we aren't thoroughly convinced. Perhaps we should play along. Regardless, he seems to know a lot about various things. Including my newest Turk. I would like to know what he does. Preferably before Tseng gets here on Sunday."

Gast agreed and the two started back toward the inner room where Cait sat waiting in Gast's study. The little robot looked up from his book as the two came in, a rather devious smirk on his face. 

In an innocent voice that was betrayed by the face he was pulling, Cait asked sweetly, "Don't suppose I could go see the baby could I?"

***

_Notes: Well. Gee. I really didn't get as far as I'd hoped I might in that one. It's difficult working in a set frame of five chapters with what I have planned. _

_But anyway, what did you all think? I really didn't know how to go about trying to persuade Vincent and Gast that Cait really did come from the future. Tricky. I many not have them believe it totally at any point. At least not fully admit that they do. _

_Please review. I usually don't resort to begging but I have a horrible feeling that there are really only two people reading this anymore. I knew there were more reading the first instalment. Perhaps people aren't aware I've begun it again. Perhaps the new stuff isn't as good.(Seems to be happening to a lot of my fics if not all of them actually) But it you are reading I would like to know what you think. Never worry that I will stop writing, two people are more than enough reading community as far as I am concerned, but it may depend on how fast the fics goes. It may not get updated as much as the ones that are read more is all. I'm getting yelled at enough that I don't update frequently enough._

_Love and big sloppy kisses  to all reading_

_AF_

_anime_fearie@excite.com_

_All stories blah blah blah_

_http://www.geocities.com/anime_fearie/_


	4. Part IV

**A Different Kind Of Superhero – **

Episode I

**Baby's First Birthday**

_By AF_

**Part IV**

~

"Yeah well, whatever it is its squirmy and horrible and I wanna tell someone about it."

- Cait Sith.

~

            "Hello Vincent!"

            Cait watched as the Turk jumped slightly at his voice. It surprised him that the usually so serious Turk could be so easily startled. Sure he'd sneaked up on the man while he was lounging against the wall of the hallway, then made his voice as loud and high as he could while jumping up onto a stack of boxes by a doorway next to Vincent, but still, did the Turks of this time have no discipline? He doubted he could have so easily have startled Reno and he told Vincent so after the man fixed him with a scowl that could have withered a rubber plant.

            "Perhaps this man, Reno, is used to being annoyed. He would have to be if you two are such great friends as you claim." 

            Vincent's tone made it clear that the idea of any Turk, future or not, being associated with Cait seemed unbelievable and very far-fetched. 

            "Maybe he is." Cait agreed after a moment. "He's had to put up with a lot. Not from me you understand," Cait continued hurriedly seeing the look on Vincent's face, "from a lot of stuff. I did mention he's the leader of the Turks didn't I?"

            "Only about ten times." Vincent replied dryly. "Though he's a little young for the position." This was a topic that Vincent had tried on numerous occasions to get Cait to talk about. The new Turks. But Cait mostly just ended up giving vague explanations. There really wasn't much he could tell Vincent without letting the fact slip that Shinra was gone, Sephiroth had almost destroyed the world and Tseng was dead. Not to mention all the little things that would happen to Vincent eventually. All of which he didn't talk about with Vincent for the good of the man's sanity. Though he was getting closer to telling the man about the fate of baby Sephiroth. He doubted Vincent would be so paranoid about letting Cait see the little demon child if he knew that. As it was, the nursery was off limits to Cait. As was the basement and basically anywhere Professor Hojo might be.

            "Competent this Reno, is he?"

            "Oh very," Cait began. "He can snap a man's neck while holding a glass of beer and not spilling a drop," he finished beaming as if he'd just told Vincent that Reno could see through walls and rescued fifty damsels a week.

            "He sounds very… interesting. I get along with this man..in the future I take it?"

            "Oh no." Cait shook his head and sat down on the box, "not unless getting along with him means trying to put a couple of bullets in his brain," well with Vincent you really can't tell, "but I think maybe had you met in better circumstances…" Cait studied Vincent for a moment before re-thinking what he was about to say, "no actually, you'd probably still not like him."

            Vincent rolled his eyes and proceeded to lean back against the wall as he had been when Cait had snuck up on him. In silence.

            "So…" Cait began.

            "No." Vincent cut him off. "The nursery is off limits."

            Cait looked at the door beside Vincent and frowned. "I wasn't going to ask that." He lied, "I was wondering if you'd like to talk somewhere or something. The Professor asked me to leave the lab for a little while. I offered to help but I think he's a bit like Reeve and he has those precise ways of doing things. All I heard was; Cait don't touch that, Cait move away from there, Cait don't press that button, oh god no, stop, don't.  A good idea to leave really when his face went that purple color, it didn't look natural." He learned forward to whisper to Vincent conspiratorially, "don't tell anyone, but I think the stress is really starting to get to the guy. So," Cait straightened up and returned his tone to normal, "wanna go catch some rays? It'll do you good. Being that pale can't be all that healthy."

            Surprisingly, Vincent actually looked slightly amused. All he had gotten off the Turk over the past few days had been quiet contempt or irritation. Cait took this as a positive sign. Despite the man's usually cold sometimes arrogant nature, Cait found himself liking Vincent. Vincent knew things. Things that nobody else he knew seemed to ever think about. This young, Turk Vincent although not yet his future self was wise in a way Cait liked trying to understand. He looked at life, examined it, and then judged what was happening and what needed to be done about it. Why just the other day he had seen Vincent break up a fight between a pair of troopers by listening to both sides of the argument before deciding who was in the wrong, what stresses the men might be under before passing judgment on them. While he did end up knocking one of the combatants unconscious against a handy wall, at least he had punished the man who most fairly needed to be punished. 

            "You aren't on duty or anything are you?" Cait asked noting Vincent's position once again standing next to the nursery doorway.

            With what seemed like great reluctance, Vincent looked toward the doorway and shook his head. "Just thinking. But I am on duty in twenty minutes. I can't talk with you today Cait."

            Cait pouted. "You don't wanna talk to me?"

            Vincent let out a long sigh and shook his head, "I like talking with you. You are interesting." Here Vincent pulled a face that made him look like he had just bitten the inside of his mouth, "Even though I don't actually like you."

            "You've told me that." Cait reminded not hurt in the least by the admission, "I'm childish, brash, uncouth and melodramatic. But you /do/ like me." Cait flashed him a toothy grin, "You just think it would be even more childish to admit it. You know Vincent, talking to me isn't like playing with dolls or something. I may look like one, but I reckon I could tell you about some distinctly adult things that'd make all the hair on your body stand up simultaneously. And I /am/ a famous Wutaian Warrior in my time. I told you that didn't I?"

            "Repeatedly." Vincent answered with a small smile. "I still don't like you. And you are annoying me."

            "Fine." Cait shrugged lightly and jumped off the boxes only stumbling slightly on his landing. He had been doing that a lot lately. His balance must be screwed up or something. Yet another thing for Reeve to fix when he got home. "I'll leave. Just don't expect me to be jump every time /you/ want to talk. I'm just as busy as you, you know."

            "How about tomorrow?" Vincent asked offhandedly. 

            Cait spun around and raced back up to Vincent. "Really?" He asked eagerly. "Sure!"

            Vincent was definitely trying not to smile. Maybe that was the problem with the future Vincent, Cait decided, he didn't have Cait around to make him smile enough.

            Leaving Vincent, Cait ambled back toward Professor Gast's study to find the man huddled over Cait's staff, notes and files strewn all over the desk around him. Cait leapt up onto the desk lightly and decided to help the Professor by sitting square in the middle of the blueprint he was reading off. The guy looked like he needed a break after all. Cait was only helping him out.

            "Something I can do for you Cait? I thought you were going to talk to Mr. Valentine." The Professor asked in a weary tone leaning back from his work and massaging his eyes. He didn't really seem that annoyed at the interruption.

            "Vincent has to work. Besides, I don't think I can talk to Vincent about this. I thought I might be able to, but I'm afraid of messing with time and all that. I saw this movie once where this guy goes back to warn someone they were going to die a horribly bloody and somewhat embarrassing death, and it ends up screwing up the present so bad that it only made it worse."

            "You are of course assuming that actions you take here are going to effect the future. Perhaps you were meant to travel back." Gast offered with a thoughtful expression. "Though I hardly think you should take chances on a mere hypothesis of mine. You were right to keep things back if you think it would be detrimental to do otherwise."

            "Now see, that's what I thought." Cait beamed at the Professor proudly, but the smile quickly evaporated, "But I have this terrible squirmy feeling that I should be warning people about things."

            "It's called guilt."

            "Yeah well, whatever it is its squirmy and horrible and I wanna tell someone about it."

            "Now now Cait, it can't be that bad." The Professor soothed patting him comfortingly.

            Cait bit his lip to keep his mouth shut. It lasted for about two seconds before he blurted, "Sephiroth is gonna kill hundreds of people and try to destroy the world!"

            Gast sat back and blinked at Cait. "Are you certain?"

            Cait nodded quickly adding, "And Vincent is gonna be locked up and experimented on by Hojo by the end of this week."

            Gast looked half believing, half disbelieving. "Hojo would never risk capturing a Turk let alone experimenting on him."

            "Oh he does. And I can't tell Vincent either of these things cause I might screw things up. I mean if Vincent never goes to sleep for all that time, he'll never meet up with Avalanche and they might never win against Sephiroth."

            "Cait, you're rambling."

            Cait nodded and let his head droop. Of course Gast would never believe him, he hadn't expected him to. The whole thing sounded ludicrous to Cait and he had met people who had actually been through it all. One thing was for sure, if he ever did end up getting into that nursery and do away with the devil spawn he could kill two birds with one stone. Hojo's experiment would be over with, Vincent would go back to Midgar and Sephiroth will never grow up to cause hundreds of deaths. That of course meant that Cait himself would never exist. Well maybe, maybe not. Reeve would still probably come to work for Shinra and rebuild Gast's creation. Sooner or later he would find what he needed to give Cait a personality. He might even choose Reno again for the second. Or he might never get that far. Still, that was a chance he was willing to take. 

            If only to stop the headache he was getting by thinking about all this time stuff.

            "I do have some good news though." Gast began brightly, seemingly trying to cheer Cait up a bit, "I think I've almost repaired your staff. It would seem that I needed only to repair the parts you burnt out hopping around as you were. But of course I don't have the same components that you're new master had at his disposal. The staff alone couldn't be made until such components were available. It really was remarkable that he got it to work at all-" Cait scratched his ear and proceeded to look bored. Sometimes the Professor went off on tangents while talking. This time though he noticed Cait's reaction and came back onto the subject. "With the adjustments I will do, you may only be able to use it three or four times, but it will get you home. That is the good news. It should be ready tomorrow or the day after. I think it would be prudent to leave as soon as you are able."

            "I guess so." Cait agreed reluctantly. As much as he wanted to get home and see Reeve and the others, he would miss talking to the Professor and Vincent. "I miss Reeve and the others."

            "I'll admit, I was a little unnerved that this man Reeve was using my work. But I guess I am not young anymore. I think I am glad someone continued my work." Cait had never tried to give Gast the impression that the man wasn't alive in his time, but the Professor was an intelligent man, he could tell.

            "You'd like him." Cait told the Professor. "He doesn't make anything you designed for the company mass destruction stuff. Reno wanted him to, but he wouldn't allow it. He said he won't make anything that in unnecessarily destructive. Just some stuff for me and the Turks. Though I guess some people might view the Turks alone as being unnecessarily destructive all on their own. His main purpose was to make me whole he said. Just like you had initially intended."

            Gast smiled at that. "Perhaps you are right. I would have liked to meet him."

            "I guess you're a lot like him in some ways. You're almost as smart as him too."

            "Almost as smart huh?" Gast asked still with that smile, though more amused now than anything.

            "Almost." Cait repeated. "Nobody is smarter than Reeve. Just like nobody is braver than Reno." Cait stated proudly puffing up his chest. 

            "One can only wonder what happened with you then." Gast muttered fondly, ruffling Cait's fur and shooing him off the blueprints. 

Cait scurried out of the Professor's way and stopped just beyond the Professor's reach, arms crossed, indignant. "What's wrong with me?"

*******

            The mansion had been quiet now for a good few hours. It was three A.M. and most of the staff had either gone to bed or settled down for their shift. The only shifts working at this time were the troopers of course. A few wandered through the halls every now and again but most were walking the grounds outside. After all, that's where the real threats would come from if there were any. Nobody would think that a threat would come from inside the mansion.

            Cait smirked. Of course most of the troopers hadn't met him either.

            He waited till Gast had tired of his study and decided to retire for the night. Satisfied that the staff was back to perfect working order, he'd bid Cait good night and wandered off to his room. The only other person Cait could assume was up and around at this time of night was Professor Hojo. Luckily for Cait, the man hardly ever left the basement lab except to wander up to the nursery occasionally. Well, Cait had plotted out the Professor's trips and he now estimated that he had at least three hours before the next visit would occur. 

            It hadn't been easy for him to track the Professor's movements. After dark, and the troopers took up their posts inside the mansion, Cait was forbidden to leave Gast's study for any reason. Gast didn't want to explain to Hojo again that Cait wasn't spying on him. Basically because he wasn't willing to tell his co-worker that Cait was doing it under his own steam. No much better to think that Cait was Gast's little toy than to have Hojo pull Cait apart to see how he worked. And much better for Cait to stay hidden so Hojo didn't think Gast was spying on him. It was all very complicated to Cait, but it sounded like sage advice. But Cait was never one to do exactly what he was told. He had long ago convinced himself that what he was doing was for the good of the planet. True superhero stuff. And that was worth disobeying Gast. And besides, Cait disobeyed Reeve enough, and he admired and loved Reeve more than almost anything, why not Gast as well then?

            In fear of setting off the time traveling device on his staff prematurely, Cait had left it back in the study and instead armed himself with a few of his stars and a little knife Gast used to cut up the apples he had every morning with his breakfast. It wasn't very big or terribly sharp, but it fit Cait like a dagger and it would serve for the job that he had in mind.

            Sneaking out of the study was the easiest part. Most of the troopers were stationed over of the other side of the floor where the nursery was and the secret door down to the basement lab. But he did have to worry when he got over to that side. He hadn't had time to memorize the guards movements from his previous nightly missions and wasn't sure when they did their rounds. But tonight was his last night here, so tonight it had to be. 

            Since Cait was small, the Turks had often used him to crawl inside air ducts and scout ahead for them. And that provided Cait with the idea on how he was going to get around the troopers. While the mansion didn't have air ducts, it did have an unused attic that could be reached either from the access above the stairwell or a vent via one of the back rooms. From there he could climb out of the attic window he'd seen from outside and swing straight down to the nursery window located a medium sized distance and off to the left. He couldn't help but feel very proud of his plan, and also smug in the knowledge that Reno'd be proud of his ingenuity too. But his pride deflated a little when he realized that not only would Reeve not be proud of him, he'd most probably be very disgusted also. He was after all planning to kill a baby. Not something even Reno would look on with a smile. Cait just had to keep reminding himself that Sephiroth wasn't a baby. He was a manufactured monster that would terrorize the world and be responsible for hundreds of deaths. He was a demon. A madman….and he was only a couple of days old.

            Shaking himself roughly, Cait pushed himself away from the wall and crept silently toward the back room. The hallway he was in was dark and silent, but he made no noise as he hurried along, just in case.

            He couldn't ever remember being a baby Cait himself. That was because he never really had been. While the idea of Cait Sith had been thrown around in his head before, Gast had never really completed Cait till after his daughter Aeris had been born. Then he had supposedly become a bodyguard of sorts for the young girl. Not that Cait remembered this of course. He'd had to read it off some of the notes Reeve had about Gast. It hadn't even really been him back then. It had been the Mark I. He found it odd that the Mark I could've been a bodyguard for the girl if Gast was always working with no one to pilot it. Anyway, as the Mark II, Cait had been a fighter. Fighting for Avalanche and helping to bring down Sephiroth. Not that he remembered that either. He could vaguely remember what he was like before Reeve had fixed him up and donated that essential will he needed to think properly for himself. But not memories of faces or places. Just commands and actions. His first remembered thought of his very own was… weird. It felt off. That was the best way to describe it. He became aware of everything at once. It was very disorientating. And it felt very different as he had told Reeve. But it wasn't so bad to get used to. He was used to his body and what it did. All he had to do was assimilate all this new information constantly coming to him. Awareness of the world around him, people and their actions. Sights, sounds, smells, everything. Overwhelming, sure. But he knew who and what he was before that had been done to him. He supposed those first few days were a lot like what it was to be a baby. All these new and different things coming at you that you had to make sense of and react to. He wasn't really a baby, he never was, but that was the closest he'd come to it. And if someone at that time had come at him with a slightly sharpish apple knife, he'd have hardly noticed the threat. Maybe a few days later when Reeve's ingrown paranoia had seeped into his brain, but certainly not before. And definitely not after Reno's data had been uploaded. He became too aware of too many sordid things when that had happened, but before all that he was more likely to have just looked at the apple knife wielding psychopath with barely a blink of his eyes. 

            Would Sephiroth look at him so innocently? So oblivious in his infant state of unawareness? 

            "Monster. Demon. Psychopath. Remember the big guy in leather that plunged his sword in Tseng's chest in front of your eyes?" Cait asked himself quietly. "He isn't innocent. Monster. Demon. Psychopath. A leather fetishist that carries and oversized very sharp sword." He kept repeating this over hoping that his mind would shut up with trying to tell him that he was haring off to murder an innocent little baby. He reverently wished that he could turn off the Reeve part of him at the moment. Not that the Reno part of him was exactly gleeful with the idea of infanticide either. But at least the Reno part of him could recognize the concept of knowing when a job needed to be done and when not to focus on conflicting thoughts in his head. In other words, Reno seemed to have this amazing ability to shut off any and all moralistic or ethical views at will when needed. Cait might have been a little disturbed at this had he not now seen the need for it. But with half of him yelling at him to stop, it was hard to shut it off himself. So he repeated his internal litany, "Monster. Demon. Psychopath." All the way down the hallway and into the back room. By the time he had dragged a couple of boxes underneath the vent leading up into the attic he was able to let it go and concentrate on the work ahead.

            Up in the attic, it was even darker. Barely any moonlight came in through the window across the room. Thick gray clouds seemed to have covered it over completely. Occasionally the window would light up with the odd streak off faraway lightening, but that was all. The lightening messed up his night vision constantly, making him blink and stop for a few moments before he could see enough to continue. It was a pain, but he was far more worried that it might begin to rain. Rain was annoying. Cait himself was waterproof, he wouldn't have to worry about the water getting his circuitry, but it would weigh his fur down and make everything slippery. He didn't have the best paws for gripping things to begin with let alone when he was twice as heavy and slipping on the slick metal of the gutter. Besides that, lightening tended to mess up his sonar. Something to do with the static in the air, he wasn't sure, but it always made it go a little wonky and thunder made sure he couldn't compensate with his acute hearing. He risked disorientation and an exploded audio receiver by keeping them both on. So he switched them off as he made his way over to the window. 

            Hopping up onto the sill he pushed the glass outward and peered down and over toward where the nursery window was. He smiled when he saw that one side of the window had been left open an inch to let fresh air in. He had feared it might be locked.

            Still smiling, Cait stepped out of the window. He caught himself on the guttering below the window easy enough. What made him uneasy was the unnatural groan that came from the metal when his sudden weight was caught on it. Hastily, Cait shimmied along the gutter till he was in line with the nursery window below. Nudging it open further with his tail, he let go of the gutter and caught himself silently on the window sill. Again he grinned. Reeve would have kittens if he even saw Cait doing this. He pulled himself up onto the window sill and dropped stealthily onto the floor in a crouch. 

Quickly he scanned the room. He wasn't sure what he expected to find. Something like the lab he supposed with sterile metal tables, tubes, equipment, and the usual lab junk. But not this. This, well, looked like a nursery. With two exceptions. There were no toys of any kind, and there was another person sleeping in here. The person was apparently asleep though she thrashed around occasionally and moaned. Cait didn't expect he would wake her. He recognized the signs for what they were even though Cait never experienced it himself. She was having a nightmare. Reeve had them occasionally. The first night he had seen Reeve thrashing around like that he had been scared witless, sure the man had been dying and spent the night alternately huddled against his Mog in the corner and shaking Reeve's shoulder trying to wake him. It hadn't been easy. From then on he made an effort to be switched off or otherwise occupied while Reeve slept. He felt bad for the woman having the nightmare, but reassured that she wouldn't be easily woken from it either.

By the foot of the bed was a crib. It didn't sit all that high, but had solid walls of woven cane that stopped Cait from being able to see inside it. Other than that, the room looked pretty bare. Two doors. One probably led to a bathroom. One he knew led to the hall. Carefully he crept up onto the end of the bed, careful to stay away from the woman and edged closer to the crib. 

"Monster. Demon. Psychopath. Monster. Demon. Psychopath. Monster. Demon. Psychopath."

Cait rose to his toes, his little apple knife raised in his left paw, and peeked over the side of the crib. Two bright green eyes stared right back at him.

"Aw fuck."

The baby giggled quietly and poked Cait in the nose.

He wished the baby could look a little freakish at least. Sure it had snow white hair and softly glowing green eyes, but he hoped for a tentacle or a pointed tooth at the very least. The baby looked…cute. 

Cait climbed inside the crib to sit beside the baby, careful to leave his weapons on the bed before he did so. "You could at least hiss at me." Cait told the baby a little put out.

The baby grabbed his tail and tried to stick it in his mouth in between another giggle. Cait rescued his tail from baby spittle and sighed heavily. 

"You aren't quite what I expected." He admitted.

"You expected a fiend from Hades?" asked a too quiet voice from one of the doorways. 

Cait poked his head over the side of the crib to see a disheveled and weary looking Vincent standing by the bathroom door, leaning against the frame.

Cait didn't have to try very hard to hide his surprise. "More like hoping." Cait confessed. "You knew I was coming?"

"Gast told me this was your last night. You've been trying to get into the nursery ever since you got here." Vincent shrugged, but it looked too forced to appear casual. "If it was going to be ever…"

Cait sat back down again and gazed at the child rather sadly. "I couldn't do it." Cait said simply.

"I thought as much." A pause. "Neither could I when I first tried it."

/That/ came as a surprise. "You were going to kill the baby?"

"I never thought anything good could come of this. Sephiroth was a science experiment. Bred to be the ultimate Soldier. Gods knew what he might one day be capable of."

Cait now understood why Vincent looked so defeated. If Cait had come to kill the baby, Vincent's own fears had proven true. Cait knew the future, Cait knew what was to become of Sephiroth. And by coming here to kill him he had told Vincent precisely that Sephiroth was hardly going to turn into a good boy scout. That what Sephiroth would become was enough of a cause to make Cait risk everything to have a chance to kill him.

"I'm sorry." Cait offered weakly.

"It doesn't turn out well does it?" Vincent asked walking into the room proper.  He asked the question of Cait, but he was looking down into the crib.

"No." Cait answered honestly. "Well some things do. Some don't."

"Sephiroth won't." It wasn't a question.

"No. no, he won't."

Vincent glanced toward the figure on the bed briefly and his face seemed to fall. The woman had stopped thrashing, but she was still having her nightmare if the whimpering was anything to go off. That was when Cait suddenly realized who she was.

"Oh. Oh, no. Vincent I-"

Vincent looked away from Lucrecia and immediately covered the saddened look on his face. "He's cute isn't he? He looks very much like his mother."

Cait turned his eyes back to the baby. "I don't have a lot of experience with babies." Cait admitted in a small voice. "This is the first live one I've seen this close. It's hard to imagine that they come from people you know. That two people can grow a new life, a whole new being without having to build anything first. No construction, they just grow. It's a little bizarre. And taken so lightly too.  Any asshole can make a baby, but nobody realizes how amazing the whole process is."

Vincent was looking at him rather oddly. Not in a bad way. Just in an interested way. "That is very true."

Cait intercepted a tiny hand darting toward his nose again and held it gently, marveling at its size. It was about half the size of his paw.

"They're so small. It didn't think anything was smaller than me."

"You better return now Cait. You can go now if you move quickly, the troopers are downstairs."

Cait nodded and climbed out of the crib. Picking up his meager weapons he headed off toward the door with Vincent. 

When Cait was gone, Vincent leant his weight onto the closed door and looked back toward the crib.

"You're bigger in some ways than most my little friend." Vincent let his eyes fall closed and his head to rest of his chest. "Far bigger."

*************

Notes: Well, this one took some time in getting out. Sorry guys, got caught up finishing other things. Hopefully the fifth chapter won't be too far off. And I'll make certain to be better prepared for the next episode.

_Neway, Cait tried to save the world and was scared off it by a pair of luminous green eyes and a cute grin. Who can blame him? And who thought Cait could actually murder a baby neway? Poor little bastard. Well, he'll be heading for home next part so stay turned and don't forget to review._

_AF_

anime_fearie@excite.com

All stories can be found on the 70th Floor at Neo Midgar

http://www.geocities.com/anime_fearie/

Submissions open for Hero Series. And don't forget the mailing list!


	5. Part V

A Different Kind Of Superhero – 

Episode I 

**Baby's First Birthday**

By AF 

**Part V**

*****

'How many times have I told you not to put yourself between a man holding a gun and Reno?'

- Elena.

*

            When Gast woke up the next morning, Cait was gone. 

            It wasn't as if the little robot had packed up all his belongings and left the mansion. Gast was pretty sure he was still around when he saw Cait's bag still sitting in the cupboard Gast had let him store his things in. No, Cait just wasn't in the study. Still, to Professor Gast that was just as worrying as the idea of Cait skipping town completely. 

            More than a little worried, Gast called Vincent in to see if he knew the missing Cait's whereabouts. Vincent had not seen him since last night. 

            "He knows this is his last day here. I fear to think what trouble he might get himself into." Gast told the Turk as he paced the small floor area of the study. 

            "I will find him." Vincent told Gast simply before turning his back and leaving the study. 

            Gast frowned at the departing Turk's back. Vincent was being even more solemn this morning than usual. But Gast could hardly let that trouble him. He still had a few things to complete on the staff, plus a few more personal things. He might as well try to get them done and stop worrying about Cait. No doubt if Cait was off somewhere doing something he shouldn't be, there would be little Gast could do to stop it. 

****

            Cait watched the bright green liquid pour out of the hose with fascination.  Mako really was quite pretty seen up close like this. Even prettier with the knowledge that it was currently pouring out of a damaged hose that fed the mako solution into the tall glass cylinder that was currently residing in Hojo's lab. Pretty because it was Hojo's to be exact. Or at least had been, before Cait had damaged the undoubtedly expensive piece of equipment. Well, Cait figured that he couldn't bring himself to kill baby Sephiroth, he might as well damage Hojo a little bit. 

            Tearing his eyes away from the mako spilling out across the floor, Cait hopped over a few scurrying mice (he had liberated from various testing cages) along with reams of white paper (he had similarly freed from various books on bookcases) he made his way over to the door, turning back only once to note with some satisfaction how well the papers soaked up the rampant mako solution off the floor. Cait grinned. He sure did hope Hojo hadn't needed all those papers for his experiments.

            Ambling up the dark corridor toward the stairway that would take him back up into the house, he heard footsteps. He managed to duck into a room just before a figure came into view, eyes on the floor before him, muttering to himself. It was Hojo. Cait clamped a hand over his mouth to hide a giggle.

            Hojo disappeared down the hall in the direction of the library and Cait reemerged from his hiding spot to continue on. Against his better judgement, he walked slowly. There was a particular sound he was waiting for.

            "Nooooo!"

            The scream of a man who had just seen his precious life's work being obliterated by mako juice. Cait couldn't hide his giggle this time and quickly scampered toward the stairwell as if the devil were on his tail. Well, it was close enough. This was Hojo he was talking about.

            Sprinting into the study, Cait pushed the door closed after him and leant against it, carefully listening for any signs of pursuit. There weren't any. He breathed a sigh of relief. 

            "Have fun?" Gast asked irritably, swiveling around in his chair to better see Cait. He had a pair of pliers in his hand and the staff lying on the desk in front of him.

            "Just a bit of senseless vandalism." Cait answered in his most innocent little voice. 

            "I'll take that as a yes then. I think Rocket Town may've heard that scream." Cait got the feeling Gast was trying to look stern, but in reality he looked almost as amused as Cait.  

            Gast put down the pliers as Cait wandered toward Gast. "Speaking about screaming, I really am worried about Reno. I guess it's not like-"

            Cait was interrupted by the door to the study opening. He froze on the spot, terrified that maybe Hojo had found him out. Luckily it was only Vincent. The solemn looking Turk spotted Cait and entered the study, being careful to close the door behind him.

            "Not like what?" Gast asked prodding Cait back into what he was saying.

            "Oh, right. Reno. Well it's not like I'll actually be gone for all the time I've been here and everything. But I can't help this little tickling feeling that makes me wanna go back. It's like when I broke Reeve's gold watch while he was at work. At first I tried to put the watch back together, but that didn't work. I went looking around the village for a replacement. But I couldn't find one. So I spent the rest of the day in the house staring at this watch that his department had bought him for his birthday in Shinra, knowing that Reeve was gonna come home soon and be angry. And not only angry, but sad 'cause I broke something that meant a lot to him. As it turned out, Reeve didn't yell at me or anything. He doesn't really. He just made sure it was an accident, which it was, and told me to be a little more careful. I think he could see how upset I was anyway and figured I'd punished myself enough 'cause I was practically a nervous wreck by the time he got home. It was the waiting that killed me. Not knowing till I saw him and explained."

            "You're worried." Gast told him simply.

"Reeve might fix it. I saw him go off after Reno, but there is only so many times you can tell Reno to be careful before you start to feel like you're talking to a brick wall. And Elena always tells Reeve; 'How many times have I told you not to put yourself between a man holding a gun and Reno?', but Reeve never listens. And I don't think Cray would believe what Reno did was an accident. Then again, I'm not too sure if me getting back there is gonna help either. I mean I am a famous warrior," Cait gave Vincent a glare here to make sure the Turk wouldn't roll his eyes like usual, "but Cray's so big, I'm only small, and Cray's got an awfully big shotgun with him."

            Vincent leant up against one of the many bookcases and frowned at Cait. "What exactly was happening when you left?"

            "The day after my birthday party, Reno was found in a rather delicate situation. Last I saw of him, Cray was chasing him through town with a shotgun. They disappeared into the forest across from the house." Cait was about to continue before Gast cut him off before he could go into another lengthy explanation.

            "Well you can ease your mind Cait. I have repaired your staff."

            Gast handed the small weapon to Cait who looked it over with a critical eye. "You're sure it works now?"

            "Should. But I warn you. The same thing that happened last time will undoubtedly happen again. Only I doubt the staff will function the same after the next burn out."

            "So I have about five chances before I'm stuck somewhere." Cait summed up.

            "As near as I can tell." The Professor responded thoughtfully.  "You said you had an idea how the staff's destination was triggered."

            "By thought I think. Weird I know, but I always seemed to get transported somewhere that had something to do with the last thing I was thinking of when I activated it." That was true enough, but he still felt ridiculous voicing his theory. He rolled his eyes. "Mebbe I should just go out into the garden, click my heels and say, 'there's not place like home'."

            "Excuse me?"

"Never mind. But you were right. I can't stay here. Reeve would be distraught if I got lost and didn't come back."

            "Oh I'm sure." Gast added with a smile.

            "That and Hojo would probably dismember him." Vincent added.

            Cait turned to Vincent with a sad kinda look. "What's up your ass this morning anyway? I would've hoped you'd be a little more sorry to see me go."

            Vincent looked about ready for an angry retort, but he managed to smother it in time. Cait guessed something had happened of big import. After all, Vincent didn't have long left before his last visit to Hojo. For maybe the hundredth time since Cait had met the Turk, he felt like blurting out a warning.

            "I am sorry." Vincent apologized. "For once my foul mood is not your fault."

            Cait frowned. "If that was your attempt at a joke Vincent, I feel very sorry for you."

            As intended, that won him a smile. "I will try to remember to look in on you in the future." The smile soon slipped though as he added under his breath, "If I'm still around at that time." 

            Cait, with his good hearing heard it though. He jogged over to Vincent and flung his small body around the surprised Turk's leg. "I'm not going!"

            With much effort, Vincent was able to dislodge the small body from his leg. He hunkered down in front of the crestfallen robot. "I didn't mean it Cait." Vincent lied.

            "Yes you did."

            Vincent caught Cait's eyes and held them with his own. "I know there is something you're not telling me." Cait went to open his mouth, thrilled by the prospect of having the slightest excuse to reveal the truth to Vincent, but the Turk interrupted him before he could continue, "But I do not want to know anyway. You said I will live to see your future Turks. I believe you. I swear I will see you again."

            Cait nodded and sniffled. "Okay." Before the Turk could protest, Cait flung his arms around Vincent's neck and gave the man a solid hug. He let go eventually and wandered back over to Gast. "I'm ready." He announced. "I'm going home."

            Gast nodded. He looked a little saddened himself. He handed Cait his bag which Cait slung over his back. Then handed him a folded white envelope. Cait looked at it questioningly.

            "Give it to Reeve. He will find it some use."

            Cait tucked the envelope into his bag and gave the study one last look around. "I'm happy to go home." Cait continued in a tone that made it sound like he was talking himself into it. Then he grinned, "Especially when Hojo finds what I left for him in his refrigerator."

            A second scream sounded through the mansion from the direction of the basement stairs just before Cait activated the staff to take him out of the room with the two men who were starting to look very worried.

*

            Before Cait gave up his time-travelling experiences altogether, there were a few things he had to do first.

            If Diamond Weapon would've even thought to look down, it might have noticed the insignificant black and white spot kick it's foot. It might have also seen the small figure pointing and laughing if it weren't watching that large streak of mako energy speeding toward it.

            It didn't matter anyway. Before the monster hit the ground, the figure had disappeared wearing a rather smug smile.

*

            So far all his teachers had been very proud of his progress. He excelled at all his studies. He was top of his classes in both physical training and theory. His weapons instructor had even told him that at the age of sixteen, there were few or none living that was a better swordsman than he. 

            Sephiroth took all the compliments in his stride. Somehow he hadn't expected any less of himself. He had been taught for so long to become a great warrior, it only seemed natural that he was now starting to become that great warrior in the flesh rather than the mere image in his mind. 

            Tomorrow was his final test. The last field-test he would take to be accepted into the Soldier ranks. Already his teachers were slating him in for a 1st Class position, regardless of how he did in the test. But for the first time, he actually felt nervous at the prospect. Were they expecting too much of him? Probably. And that was what made him nervous. He may turn into the great warrior they wanted him to be. But he was only human after all, whereas he expected they thought he perform almost godlike on the field. 

He wasn't a god. He was just himself.

With a heavy sigh, he got up from his study table and started over toward his small bunk nestled into one corner of his small, square, white-walled barracks room. Sitting down, he began to take off his boots.

The action was interrupted by a white flash of light behind him on the bunk. Surprised and confused beyond words, he didn't even have a chance to turn around before he felt a rather harsh slap cuff the back of his head. By the time he snapped his head around in the direction the slap had come from, another bright flash flared across his vision, and nothing was behind him.

*

Cait turned his head to one side, watched. Then turned his head to the other side, and watched some more. He never knew mass destruction could look so pretty. All swirling reds together with the white of holy and the green of the lifestream. 

"I wish I'd bought my camera."

Cait frowned and activated his staff.

Ah, well, next time. 

_I better get home. Gods know how much trouble Reeve, Reno and the others would get into without him._

He didn't like that thought.

*

Seeing the familiar lab around him, Cait breathed a sigh of relief. That was until he /really/ took his surroundings. Sure he was home, it could be no other place but his lab, but something was off about it. Here and there, the walls looked badly scared with black burns, the ever present scattered paper, files and equipment were missing. Not to mention his Mog and Rude. And probably the most startling, Cait was already here.

Another Cait was sitting on a high stool across the room, leaning his elbows on the bench, looking out of the dimly lighted window, apparently waiting for something.

For some reason, Cait felt a little jittery. He didn't remember the lab ever looking like this. And he sure didn't remember Reeve packing up all his things. Something was very wrong.

"Here, what're doing in my lab?" Cait asked the other robot irritably. He couldn't help his tone. He was too scared.

The other Cait's head swung around to face him, the luminous green eyes blinking once in surprise before seemingly coming to some realization. 

"Is it time for that already?" The other Cait asked wearily. "Well, we don't have much time, Reno'll probably be back soon."

Cait thought about that for a moment. "Good. At least he'll be able to tell me what's going on."

The other Cait jumped down off the stool and regarded Cait with sad, worried eyes. "No, you'll be gone before Reno gets back. You have to be. Remember all that stuff about not telling people their future? Well, it's the same problem I'm having right now. But you'll figure out what happening for yourself soon enough. Too soon if you ask me."

Cait cocked his head to the side and regarded his twin in utter mystification. "Since when did I become a riddle making halfwit?"

The other Cait sighed. "Oh like I said, not too long from your time. You may have noticed that your not quite home yet."

"I'm in the future." Cait guessed. "But I was sure I was thinking about the lab and Reeve and stuff."

"You were." The twin replied simply. "But you'd be better off thinking about the lab and what was going on when you left. Trust me, you don't want to be here yet."

Cait nodded, but he started getting that cold feeling again. "Something's wrong. Something that had to do with what I was thinking about. What happened?"

"I don't want to tell you. You don't want to live with that knowledge. There'll be nothing you can do to stop it so you might as well live in blissful ignorance till the time comes for you to deal with it. Time stuff is tricky. You might have noticed."

"Oh I have." Cait paused looking around the charred, empty lab for a few moments. "It'll work out right? Whatever is going to happen I mean. Everything will be okay again won't it?"

The other Cait broke eye contact with him and looked down at his feet. "I don't know yet."

The expression on his other self's face was so pitiful that Cait almost felt like beating the robot to find out what was going to happen here in the future. Either that or giving his other self a big hug to comfort him.

"I better be going then." Cait said instead.

The other Cait looked up now, but his expression hadn't changed. "Good luck."

Cait paused for a moment longer. "Any advice you /can/ tell me for the future?"

The other Cait was thoughtful for a while before finally saying, "Yeah, when you meet a Minotaur named Brak, for gods-sakes, don't 'moo' at it. It'll only make him angry."

Cait nodded and took in the advice. Fixing the lab, Rude, the Mog and everything from his time steadfastly in his mind he activated the staff. 

            He only forgot one thing to ask his other self before he popped back into existence on the other end of the journey.

            "Wait. What the fuck is a Minotaur?" 

***

Reeve sprinted after them. Although Cray had a marvelous head-start on him and was probably the fitter of the two, (not to mention the insane blood lust coursing through his veins) Reeve managed to catch up to him about five minutes later.

            "Cray!"

            Cray had slowed in order to take aim at something.  Reeve could imagine what.  He reached Cray and knocked his arm as the went to fire.  The shot went up into the air.

            "Cray! What are you doing!"

            Breathless, Cray gave Reeve a glare before digging into his pocket for more bullets and cracking the gun open to reload. 

            "Found him in Cara's bedroom. Pervert. Just asleep in her bed like nothing was wrong! I'll kill him!"

            "Cray, murder is not the answer. Trust me. Let's go back to my place and talk okay?"  Reeve tried soothingly. 

"I don't want to talk." Cray spat back at him angrily.

            He could see that talking Cray out of murdering Reno wasn't going to be as easy as he had hoped. And he wasn't sure if he blamed Cray at all for his anger. If he had a daughter. And one day he found her in bed with a guy like Reno, he might be a little more than tempted to shoot the bastard himself. However, whether he agreed with Cray or not, he was Reno's friend though.

            "Cray, listen to me. It's not worth shooting him. Trust me. I've been tempted to myself over the years." 

            Cray's eyes narrowed at something in front of them and took off again through the snow, darting around Reeve as nimbly as a man half his age. Making a frustrated noise in the back of his throat, Reeve took off after him.

"Freeze right there!" 

            Reeve burst into the small clearing just as Cray had called out his command for Reno to halt. Being caught out in the open like this, Reno didn't have anywhere to go for cover. At least not as quickly as Cray could fire off a shot.  Reno stopped running and turned back toward Cray, a hopeful look on the Turk's face. Probably hopeful that Cray was only trying to scare him. Reeve knew better though. 

Seeing Cray raise his gun, Reeve didn't slow down but ran hard into the clearing, skidding to a stop between the gun and Reno. 

"Cray wait." Reeve tried again.

"Reeve I told you to get outta the way. This is between me and that pervert behind you."

"You can't shoot him." Reeve said hurriedly, he could hear Elena crashing her way toward them somewhere behind Cray. She still sounded a little ways off though and he wished she would hurry up. She was much better at talking to people than he was.

"Why not?" Cray snarled.

"Because…" Reeve fumbled for the right words but couldn't come up with any. He could almost feel Reno's scowl at his back from the pause. "Because he's my friend?" He wished that hadn't sounded like a weak question.

"Your daughter would be very upset." Reno offered.

Both men moved their eyes to him. "Shut-UP!"

Something, probably an animal rustled among the trees above Cray, but the man steadfastly kept his gun trained toward Reno. Unfortunately that meant that it was pointing straight at Reeve's chest. The idea of getting shot had never appealed to him as he supposed it didn't to many people. But the idea of catching a shotgun pellet in his chest made sweat roll down his back and the hairs on the back of his neck stand up.

"But you can't kill him."

He almost expected another 'why not?' but what he did get was perhaps a little more disturbing. Cray smiled slightly maniacally. "I'm not gonna kill him Reeve. Your right about that." Reeve heard Reno breath a sigh of relief behind him, but he had the feeling Cray wasn't finished. "I'm going to shoot out a kneecap. He can live without a leg surely."

The sigh behind him turned into a sharp intake of breath. Obviously Reno had finally noticed the note of dead seriousness in Cray's voice. Reeve definitely had.

Elena burst out into the clearing just behind Cray, but Reeve's warning glance cautioned her against doing anything drastic like jumping the temporarily crazed man with the shotgun. As it was, she didn't look like she really needed to be warned anyway. Her eyes fairly bugged when she saw their situation. Cray took no notice of her.

Just when Reeve was about to open his mouth to try yet another calming tactic, that sound, the rustle from the trees above turned into a distinct crackle of moving leaves and shifting branches. But only for a second. Not enough time for anybody to have a chance to look up into the trees before a dark, cloaked figure descended from the branches above Cray. Everybody in the clearing was literally too shocked too move. That included Cray thankfully. The dark figure landed on the ground with barely a sound, straightened up in front of the before murderous man and easily plucked the shotgun from the man's nerveless fingers with his claw. In a clear, soft though commanding, voice the figure told Cray;

"I really don't think you want to use this."

Cray, wide eyes, pale just nodded in response.

Elena, the only other person able to see the newcomers face looked just as pale as Cray did, though probably for very different reasons. Reeve, however, didn't need to see his face. Now over his initial shock, he was able to recognize the man with little trouble. After all, this was a man one tended not to forget about easily.

"Vincent?" Reeve asked timidly.

Vincent looked over his shoulder at Reeve and gazed at him with the same cool expression he'd always had. "Reeve."

A small figure crashed through the bushes and into the clearing just beside Elena and pulled up short at the scene. Rude came after, much more quietly, but his gun was out as if he expected some trouble. When his eyes landed on Vincent, he seemed to waver between keeping his gun up or lowering his arm. Cait however beamed and scuttled over to Vincent, taking the ex-Turk's free hand. "Hey Vincent! Miss me already huh? Knew you would." Cait kept up the inane chatter as he lead the extremely surprisingly, amused looking Vincent back toward the Village. "I mean I only just got back, but for you its been like thirty years hasn't it? Wow, and you remembered what I told you for thirty years! See you don't hate me after all. By the way, I like you're new clothes. They're very you. Especially the claw thing. I wonder if Reeve could make me one of those. Hey thanks for rescuing Reno and everything, I would have barely-" Soon Cait's chatter started to diminish as the two walked further away, leaving the other five people to stare shocked after them.

Reeve opened his mouth to speak a few times but nothing seemed to want to come out. Predictably, it was Reno who was the first to recover his voice. 

"Well, that was…unexpected."

A moment later Cait came trotting back, minus Vincent. He jogged up to Reeve and thrust a crumpled up envelope into his hand. "I nearly forgot." Then took off again into the forest. "Hey, Vincent, wait up!"

More confused now than ever, Reeve took several sheets of white paper out of the envelope. The first had a short letter written in handwriting that Reeve had come to know almost as well as his own. Only difference was that this was fresh written on very white paper that looked newly bought.

Since meeting the Mark II, Cait, I was at first appalled at the idea of someone using my notes without my permission. However, I find that I no longer feel as though someone has invaded my privacy or stole from me. That in someone continuing my work after so many years, I now feel honored. Honored especially by the idea that my designs will not be misused by the Shinra, or those who might seek to gain money or power by their benefits. And through Cait, I have learnt that you are no such man who would do this or let others do this without just cause. I am proud to know I can therefore leave whatever unfinished work in your capable and obviously very talented hands. 

_Look after Cait well my friend. He has come to mean a lot to me as I'm sure he has to you. My only regret in this is that I will never be able to ask you all the questions I've wanted to in person. Thank you Reeve, and I wish you luck._

Professor Gast 

_Shinra Mansion, Nibleheim_

_208 A.C._

_P.S. On the following paper I have detailed places within my Icicle Village lab and other places where I have or will attempt to secret especially precious equipment and documents. I hope you can make something of them._

Reeve looked up from the letter with a start and stared after where Cait had disappeared. 

"Cait?! What /have/ you been doing?"

*

_End of Episode I._

*************

Notes: Well for an episode that started flagging halfway through, I think I managed to rescue it well enough. Actually I ended up loving it to tell truth and I hope you all enjoyed reading too. Thank you Sa for the original staff slots idea. Sorry I kinda molested the idea for my own good and turned it into a time travelling disaster. 

_Now, never fear, this isn't the end, not by a long shot. Episode II is on its way. Twill be called **ADKOS Episode II: A Superhero's Destiny. **__So look out for that one. That one promises to be one of the best ones I assure you! It will see a return of a much loved ADKOS character (as if you couldn't tell) and the appearance of two all new ones. One a new baddie, the other, well, let's just say that Cait's individuality is about to be very threatened. Also more on the Mog and I promise this one will have more of Reeve and the Turks as well! For those reading off-site, I will add a small preview onto the end of this story in a few weeks to whet your appetite. _

_Please review, this is the last part for this episode so make AF feel loved and tell her what you think. Oh and I will be taking a small break before the continuation. You understand. I'm hoping to get another story a bit more along and another one almost ended before I get back into Hero. But bear with me, and don't forget the series, it will returned, bigger and better and with another new 'Reno's shirt quote' to keep you all giggling._

_Later_

_AF_

_anime_fearie@excite.com_

_All stories are locked up, starved and whipped on the 70th Floor at Neo Midgar._

_http://www.geocities.com/anime_fearie/_

_Written and Art submissions are still open for the series, and don't forget about the mailing list!_


	6. HE2 Preview

ADKOS Episode II: A Superhero's Destiny

Part I – Preview.

Opening her eyes, she blinked them rapidly,  unaccustomed to the bright florescants beating her eyes. At first she didn't see much except vague outlines. Then moving shapes began to resolve around her. A voice. 

            "Did it work?"

            A voice she felt she ought to know. Two of them actually.

            "One moment. She needs to acclimatize."

            One impatient, the other almost kindly and gentle. The second was much closer to her.

            Finally the two people resolved fully in her vision and she was met with two faces both looking at her intently as she lay on her stomach on what looked to be a waist high metal table. 

            The first woman, the impatient one, looked at her almost eagerly. A little unnerving. She had long dark hair that fell over her shoulder as she bent closer to the bench, focused green eyes and a rather hard expression. At one time she could understand the woman's impatience, but at the same time it confused her.

            The second woman, a woman with dark eyes and slightly curly and somewhat disheveled unremarkable mousy brown hair watched her concernedly and a little nervously. She could associate far better with that look at the moment.

            "Well?" The first prompted impatiently.

            "A moment Miss Ryder. Please. She may be a little disorientated and possibly even a little frightened. Remember you disallowed the activation test prior to the individuality inputs. "

            "Scared." Miss Ryder snorted, straightening up and putting her hands on her slender hips. "If you had taken my suggestion and only used me, it wouldn't be scared Ryana."

            Ryana seemed to take a small calming breath before answering just as calmly, "The notes told us how the Mark Two suffered with only one source.  It could result in major behavioral problems in the long run. We needed a second source. I suggest even using a third."

            The two were talking over her, but she didn't mind. She was confused and /very/ disorientated. It would be better if she found out what was going on before drawing attention to herself.

"Yeah, well, why you Ryana? Why not Weran or Matthew?"

            "I suggested another woman in the interests of gender orientation for her. And you were insistent one of the sources would be yourself. We don't need to confuse her anymore than necessary."

            "Oh great, so now I have to be worried about gender issues for my weapons." Miss Ryder said throwing up her hands. 

            Ryana scowled slightly, but made sure Miss Ryder couldn't see it. Instead, Ryana turned all attention back to her.

            "Why won't it do anything but lay there and blink at us?" Miss Ryder asked.

            Ryana seemed to ignore the other woman. "Can you hear me?" She asked her instead.

            She nodded slightly. Why did she do that?

            "And why does the thing have red eyes?" Miss Ryder asked pointedly. "I mean I know the prototype doesn't particularly look fierce. So why bother? A nice touch for one of the assembly models later on, but for this?" Miss Ryder almost sounded disgusted.

            "I couldn't remake the iris coverings from the designs. Not yet anyway. The lights from the optics are red. I didn't do it on purpose."

            "Yeah well, it looks like an albino." 

            She blinked up at Miss Ryder and asked; "Is something wrong with me?" 

That shocked her. Talking. She new she had the ability. Expected herself to be able to do it even. But it still shocked her as if it were the first time she had done such a thing. Surely that hadn't been the first time she had talked. Was it? By the reactions by the other two women, she would have to say it was. 

            Ryana was the first to recover from the apparent shock. "Why, do you feel like there is something wrong?"

            She automatically went to move in order to stand, and was just as surprised that she could, and looked down at herself. White. Pure white. That shocked her more. She had not expected that. She was very short too. And somewhat fluffy. She screwed up her face. She was short fluffy and white. Something tugged at her back as she moved. A thin cord ran from somewhere in her back to a humming machine next to her.

            "I don't know." She answered softly.  "I don't know what is supposed to be normal."

            "Isn't it working?" Miss Ryder asked coming back over to the bench.

            Ryana scowled at her again but didn't offer any comments. Instead Ryana kept talking to her. "You are currently hooked into the building's mainframe. Follow the directions in your programming and access a file called AIMI. You will find all your answers."

            "Is that wise?" Miss Ryder asked.

            "She needs to know who she is." Ryana answered as if it were obvious.

            "What's AIMI?" She asked just as softly.

            Ryana smiled warmly, reassuringly. "That's you Aimi."

            That must be her name. Aimi. Closing her eyes to better concentrate, she opened the file.

**********

Notes: Just a small taste of the next episode. It'll be a little while before I'll be ready to start posting it again but I hope you don't forget to check back for it. The full Part I will be a bigger section I assure you. You can get a heads up on the mailing list or Neo Midgar.

_Teehee, well, what did you think of Aimi?_

_AF_

_anime_fearie@excite.com_

_http://www.geocities.com/anime_fearie/_


End file.
